The Procurement Man, volume four, "I Know That I Am Tall"

The Procurement Man, Vol. 4
I Know That I Am Tall
by Toadsgoboad
Part One: Fireworks at the Funeral

A Simple Procedure Induces Movement

Mankenhouse explained the method by which he caused the pinto beans to dance around the sofa. It was too much for Wilson.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t follow you.” He admitted with a laugh. He knew his colleague was brilliant.
“Let me put it this way…” Mankenhouse started again.
“No, don’t worry about it.” Wilson threw up his hands. “I’ll never get it.”
“You certainly won’t if you just give up.” Mankenhouse couldn’t understand Wilson’s attitude. A competent assembler of tin cans into vaguely architectural structures, Wilson had it in him to be so much more. Yet he seemed content to draw his check, drink his coffee, and cuddle up to the latest issue of Stocking and Sandal Review, an independent comic put out by a mutual friend.
“I’m happy just to watch your little beans dance.” Wilson replied. “Make them do it again.” He didn’t really need or want to see the performance again; it was just a polite way to get Mankenhouse off his back.
“Alright.” Mankenhouse agreed. He flipped the switch on the small cardboard box he held in his hand. As the beans, each one bearing a happy face painted on it, began their dance, circling the sofa on which Mrs. Triliver lay bound and gagged, Mr. Winbig put his head in at the door.
“Enjoying yourselves, boys?” He asked.
Mankenhouse ended the display. Each bean sagged gratefully. Mrs. Triliver struggled feebly.
“What do you want, Mr. Winbig?” Mankenhouse asked, looking wearily at the man-like beast in the bow tie.
“Just want to ask Wilson if he’s seen the latest issue of Stocking and Sandal.” Mr. Winbig smiled wickedly.
“Why?” Wilson asked, his eyes brightening. “Is it out already?”
“Yes it is.” Mr. Winbig sounded as if he were taunting a five-year-old. “You should take a look. I think you’ll be surprised.” He exited snickering to himself, snickering all the way down the hall.
“What did he mean by that?” Wilson wondered.
“Wilson,” Mankenhouse said gently, “You were quite fond of Mr. Triliver, weren’t you?”

Don Continues to Hoard

Under the waters of Besmircher Lake seemed a good place to hide the objects stolen from the Too Happy Emporium. Don put on his turtle costume and walked out into the lake with a laundry basket full of things to be hidden.
“Luckily the lake is fitted with the latest and best in illumination technology.” Carol commented to Debrain, her and Don’s neighbor and local liaison to the deity.
Debrain mused silently, rubbing her chin with a practiced casualness.
“Don has other places he hides things, right?” Debrain later asked Carol as the two ladies sat before the small indoor aquarium sipping warm, cozy beverages.
“Well,” Carol shyly consented to admit, “Yes, but please don’t say anything to anyone in town.”
“The Good Time Brigade?” Debrain answered, mocking the townspeople’s predilection for the hokiest music in history. “Carol, I wouldn’t betray a confidence, and certainly not to those people.” She smiled with the corners of her eyes and the muscles at the sides of her jaw and took another sip. “This is good.” She said. “What is it?”
“Essence of balboa root.” Carol told her.
“Really?” Debrain wondered, racking her memory. Where had she heard of balboa root? As she thought, Don entered the palatial cabin, unknotting his breathing apparatus and loosening his shell.
“Do I smell balboa root infusion?” He asked.
“Yes.” Carol called. “Come and get some.”
“I’ve never had it before.” Debrain admitted while Don flicked his tongue into the cup he had been provided. “Where did you get it?”
Don’s long whiskers quivered as the spicy taste of the drink excited his central nervous system.
“Oh, we have our sources.” He sang.
Debrain glanced from Don to Carol and back.
“I think,” She said slowly, “You’d better tell me exactly where you get all this stuff.” She gestured at the array of crackers and sweets on the low table.
“Or else what?” Don laughed. He took it as a joke.
“Or else I’ll cut you off from our god.” Debrain grimly answered.

Paralysis, Indoctrination, and Crud

“Gentlemen,” Dr. Beanbats summoned the attendees attention by rising from his chair and calling aloud in his most commanding tone. “Gentlemen, it is apparent that Drs. Flibshid and Moore are not going to make it in time for the centerpiece of tonight’s presentation, so, as time is getting on, I think we’d better proceed.” He looked to his left. “If we could have the lights dimmed, please? Thank you.” He sat down. Behind Dr. Beanbats, on a screen of delicately woven spider’s silk, was projected a film. As it played, Dr. Harmfuss leaned over to Beanbats, sitting on his right.
“What’s this about?” He asked.
“The Duke Rancid squirrel paralysis beam. This is edited footage of the secret films taken by Flibshid and Moore.” Dr. Beanbats whispered back.
Harmfuss nodded knowingly and took up his wine glass. He looked out on the ballroom full of vacuum cleaner salesmen. He hoped they were getting their money’s worth. The dinner, a disappointing plate of undercooked ham and canned green beans, had not reflected well on Goose Rampant Technologies’ Seminars Division.
Seven miles away Dr. Flibshid and Dr. Moore, scheduled to appear at the seminar and deliver their commentary on the film, found themselves trapped in their rented car by a pack of gargantuan chipmunks that had driven them into a ditch and now circled the car, bashing it with their stubby, but armored tails.
“How many do you think there are?” Flibshid asked his partner.
“I count nine, but there may be more.” Moore gripped the wheel and fantasized about running their attackers down.
“I don’t get it.” Flibshid said. He locked eyes with one of the chipmunks and repeated himself, this time shouting, “I don’t get it!”
The chipmunk he had addressed pressed his pink nose against Flibshid’s window.
“All rodents are brothers!” It barked.
Moore leaned across Flibshid.
“Then you’re a dirty rat!” He yelled.
“Quiet!” Flibshid angrily admonished his colleague. “I’m going to try reasoning with him.”

The Swapping of the Hat for the Tenderloin

Mavis, dazzling to the eye in the costume of a young, newlywed housewife, entered the Costello butcher shop on the Street of ESP and asked to speak to Mr. Costello personally.
“I am Mr. Costello,” Replied the young man behind the counter, “But I suppose you mean the owner, Mr. Costello, sr. My father.” He added as he turned to step into the tiny office.
While she waited Mavis examined the calendar on the wall to her left. That month’s picture was of a cow dressed as Napoleon the First, dismissing a flock of geese in nineteenth century beach attire from his presence. The calendar had been provided, so it said at the bottom, by the Poochen Knave Benchworks, whatever that was.
“Can I help you?” A rough voice asked.
Mavis turned and confronted the elder Costello, a florid man with enormous lips which he seemed to be pushing out even further than they normally stood. His eyes were heavily lidded and bloodshot.
“Yes.” She replied, a smile like a lemon pie lovingly made and proudly presented brightening up her face. “I heard that you take hats in exchange for certain cuts of meat.”
“Where’d you hear that from?” Costello lowered his brows and looked askance at the young woman. It was only a joke, though, as he immediately revealed, smiling broadly. “What kind of hat have you got?”
“I have it right here.” Mavis reached into a paper sack and produced a creased and stained homburg whose brim, had it been the roof on a porch, would not have saved even a skinny man from the rain’s fury.
The butcher pursed his lips as he took the hat in his hands. He appeared to have a beefsteak tomato ripening in the middle of his face.
“What do you think, Chet?” He asked his son.
The younger Costello shrugged. He was going to be a veterinarian. What did he care?
“I’ll give you a piece of tenderloin for it.” The butcher decided.
“I’ll take it.” Mavis replied. “Thank you very much.”
After Mavis left, Costello handed the hat to his son. “Feed it to the beast.” He said. The young man reluctantly trudged into the back room.

Nobody’s Mother Intended to Sharpen the Spoon

Spoons, brought back from Entropy Island in a designer purse, were distributed to the groundlings without regard for their ultimate use. Lectron, his arm in a cast, delivered a blessing with each spoon he handed out.
“Why is he doing that?” Micra, a basic pleasure model, asked Winky.
“He wanted to be a priest.” The latter female, sister to Slinky, answered. “Went to seminary and everything. But he couldn’t hack it. He’s felt guilty ever since.” She eyed Lectron closely as she said this last, running her pointer finger over her dry bottom lip.
“Interesting.” Micra responded. Actually it disgusted her, but she wasn’t sure of Winky’s feelings on the subject of religion in general and the culturally dominant deity in specific. Acquiring such knowledge could wait until another, more convenient time. Right now she needed to put on her groundling mask and get in line if she wanted to get her spoon.
“May you understand true awareness.” Lectron urged Micra as he handed her a spoon.
“Well, that wasn’t too offensive.” Micra admitted to herself as she turned to the photographer and held aloft her spoon.
“Smile, honey.” The man with the camera ordered.
“I can’t.” Micra truthfully told him. She shuffled outside the courtyard to the raceway, where she met up with Winky. “What did the old guy tell you?” She asked.
“I didn’t get in his line.” Winky replied. “I got mine from a young guy. Kind of cute. In a really zealous, fresh-faced missionary sort of way.”
Micra mused on this until they were joined by Slinky.
“Hey, where’d you girls get the spoons?” The newcomer, taller and thinner than her sister, with a high waterfall of straight blond hair, asked enthusiastically.
“They’re free.” Winky pointed. “Right in there.”
As they looked, however, Lectron, Dr. Phipps, Murray, and that curiously uniformed man with the cartoonish van dyke emerged from the courtyard, the purse upside down and obviously empty in Murray’s arms.
“They’re all gone, praise Lord Vandrato!” Lectron cried.
“Give me a break.” Winky muttered.
Micra tapped her spoon against her tan, plump thigh wonderingly.

Dismal Uncertainties Loom Over Pajama Parade

“I just don’t know.” Rad Conner admitted, as much to himself as the circle of associates that stood with him about the warming glow of the brazier. “I am filled with uncertainty.”
“Uncertainty is dangerous.” Quoted Max. General Blackablack was a favorite of his.
“Uh-huh.” Conner vocalized sarcastically, glancing at the young man with the crewcut.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, how are we this morning?” Ward Manners barged jovially into the group, looking each man in the eye and touching a hand here, a shoulder there. “What’s the discussion about?” He asked.
“We’re wondering whether the pajama parade will go ahead as planned.” Max informed the older man.
“It won’t.” Conner decided.
“Well, now, I don’t know about that.” Manners countered. He unwrapped a stick of gum and folded it into his mouth. “That parade’s a tradition. A long-standing tradition.” He shook his head ruminatively. “People don’t like traditions being violated.”
“But what about these flammability protocols?” Jackson, a small-scale corn farmer from the lands behind the old factory, raised the central point.
“I think they’re valid.” Manners answered. Anticipating his fellows’ words, he added, “Don’t get me wrong; traditions are hard to abandon, but if I were in charge, I’d have my doubts too.”
It was evident that the men held Manners and his opinions in high regard. They reviewed what he had said in their own inner spaces. All, that is, but Rad Conner. He threw up his hands and stalked off, exhaling in exasperation.
He walked down to the small pond by the bank and stood with his hands in his pockets. There had been a time when his dearest pastime had been to come to this pond and set out an armada of tiny paper boats.
“Hey, Rad, what’s wrong?” Inez Shamrock had approached him without his realizing it. “You look crazy.”
Conner snorted.
“The Battle of the Mechanical Potato Men took place right here.” He said.

How do the Men of Flesh Paste Their Houses Together?

The answer to this intriguing question lies in the last few pages of Bufmill’s Pontificator’s Delight, that timeless compendium of speculation and anecdote which has sat unopened on a shelf in my upstairs parlor since some unnamed night visitor left it there in fit a pique. Pique is always the result of a fit, have you noticed? Perhaps I should make a compendium of my own, full of just such observations. Of course, it would never sell as well as Bufmill’s, but then mine would have one of my unmarketable paintings on the cover, whereas the former book is graced with one of those treasured Norman Rockwell pictures, one of the ghost of George Washington helping Santa Claus consume a plate of cookies while tow-headed, gap-toothed rascals dressed in pajamas surreptitiously look on in reverent amazement.
The houses of the Men of Flesh, for those of you unfamiliar with basic science, are held together with a gum paste developed by Ronson Brothers for the space program. It is the application of this paste, however, that has confounded the imaginations of legions of young boys much like yourselves in most regards, except for the whiskers and bow-tie.
Although Bufmill categorically states that the application is done with a hydraulic cone separator and a wide variety of nozzles, it is my belief that in the colder climates a bottle brush and good, old-fashioned elbow grease are utilized. Other than this divergence of opinion, however, we are in complete agreement. You need not bother buying my book when it comes out; Bufmill’s will satisfy the cravings of your heart.
If you want to know the story behind the Men of Flesh and these houses of theirs, however, you may want to wait for my book. I can tell you about their great leader George Washington and his faithful companion Santa Claus and the twelve year battle they waged to unite the disparate tribes of Men of Flesh into a single, house-building confederation. Can Bufmill and his tawdry, sensationalist book give you the inside details on how young Judy Garland tried to come between the two legendary heroes like so much gum paste into the corrugated crevices of an attractive three bedroom neo-Victorian dwelling? I doubt it. Have a little patience, for Pete’s sake.

Crabwise the Gifts Go Back in Time

Pauncho Desperado, recently discharged from the service of the Ministry’s Antidisestablishmentarianism sub-committee, took a job with Brad Uak’s lobbying firm, Mosying Along, Ltd. His first day was the worst; the coveralls he had been issued were too tight in the crotch, he had forgotten to bring his lunch, and he became confused down in the basement and had to be led back upstairs by Mr. Uak himself.
“I am so sorry, Mr. Uak.” Desperado proclaimed. “I mistook the hot water for an idol…” He trailed away as he recalled the incident. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.
“You’re not working for the ministry any longer, Pauncho.” Uak clapped the man on the shoulder. “Try to relax.”
“I will!” Desperado responded enthusiastically as he had been taught by his father.
As the weeks passed Desperado did find himself relaxing. He learned to call the women in the secretarial pool by their first names and to poke around under the vending machines for loose change without worrying who saw him do so.
One day in August when negotiations between Mosying Along and Senator Thurst were just reaching the simmering point, Brad Uak summoned Desperado to his office on the top floor.
“Pauncho, come in.” The great lobbyist instructed on noticing Desperado standing in the doorway. “Pauncho, this is Ron Appealing.” He gestured towards the skinny, saturnine fellow standing beside him. “Ron is taking charge of an exciting new program we’re starting up here at Mosying Along. I’ve chosen you, Pauncho, to be Ron’s personal assistant. How does that grab you?”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Uak.” Desperado replied as humbly as his father would have done in a similar situation.
“Wonderful!” Uak slapped his hands together. “Ron, why don’t you take Pauncho here along with you and explain to him his part in this exciting new program?”
“Right, Brad.” Appealing grinned as if he were trying to bite a shoelace in half. He stepped forward and took Desperado by the elbow. “Have you ever cleaned up after a dog has gone to the bathroom, Pauncho?” He asked.
“Yes.” Desperado answered. “My father had many such animals.”
“Great.” Appealing nodded, steering his new assistant towards the stairs.

The Musical Chaperone

Gerry Mulligan, than whom none is cooler, explained to me that small, very young, early peas were much like the eggs of the lesser foulmouth fajisto.
“What else can you explain to me?” I asked the legendary baritone saxophonist.
Mulligan scratched his chin. (He didn’t yet have his famous beard.)
“I can’t think of anything.” He said. “The lesser foulmouth fajisto’s eggs aren’t packed in sugar water.” He added quickly.
“Well, that’s something.” I confessed, tossing my emptied can of early peas into the nearby trash receptacle. I smacked my mouth with distaste. “I wish I had something to get rid of this taste.”
“I’ve got some yogurt-covered raisins.” Mulligan offered. He patted the pocket of his sports jacket.
“No thank you.” I shook my head. I stood up and sighed manfully, resolved to move on to the next task. “You ready?” I asked Mulligan.
“Sure.” His jacket was a predominantly red plaid with narrow lapels and natural shoulders. He stood as well and buttoned his jacket. I was envious. In my haste to hit the road that morning I had put on the only clean clothes I could find: an off-white pair of coveralls permanently stained with rusty scuffmarks and a pair of combat boots.
“I feel like Pete Townshend.” I remarked as we headed towards the cages on the hill. “All I need is a numbered guitar.”
“And a beard.” My chaperone added.
I glanced at him.
“You’d look good with a beard.” I told him.
“You think so?” He scratched his chin.
“You should number your saxophones too.”
He chuckled.
“I don’t think that would work.”
“Probably not.” I looked up. We had reached our destination.
“Stay behind me now.” Mulligan advised. He picked up a stick and reached for the latch on the cage door. From under a pile of dead leaves crawled the lesser foulmouth fajisto.

Clarinet’s Clarification in the Echo Chamber

“Woody Allen begged us to sell him this clarinet.” Laughed Emile Charepone. He held the factory’s one-hundred-year-old test model, the clarinet against which all their horns were measured. “He offered us tens of thousands of dollars.” The clarinet was unusually shaped, looking as much like a normal clarinet as a skeleton does the fully fleshed human body.
“And he never thought to ask you to make him a copy?” I asked.
“We’d have done it,” Charepone said. “Especially for that kind of money, but he never asked.” He led me towards the factory’s echo chamber.
“Sometimes even a genius can be stupid.” I answered with a sagacity acquired over many days of travel.
“Do you want a pinch of snuff?” My companion asked, pointing to his bottom lip.
I looked at him in horror and confusion.
“Some men find it a consolation.” He explained.
“I have no need of any aside from the satisfaction of a job well done.” I replied, grimly, but not without humor. Charepone nodded, handed me the clarinet, and opened the echo chamber door. I stepped inside and waited while he closed the door. Through the observation window adjacent to the door I could see Charepone now joining technician Alain Robert. The latter was dressed in a white lab coat. He adjusted something before him on the control panel and spoke to Charepone, who in turn spoke to me over the intercom.
“We are ready whenever you are, Toadsgoboad.” He said.
I put the clarinet to my lips and cautiously played the opening notes to “The Aromatic Juggernaut.” Almost immediately the fairy known as Arpaguel appeared before me, summoned from his ethereal hidey-hole by the tune.
“Who dares call me?” He demanded, looking about frantically. I glanced at Charepone and Robert. The former urged me on, flapping his hands at me with typically Gallic passion.
“It is I, Toadsgoboad, who have called you to this place.” I replied as haughtily as I could.
“For what purpose?” Arpaguel asked warily.
My answer would have done a baritone sax proud.




Solicitations

By paying close attention to the shopping patterns of the elderly cowboys I was able to determine the appropriate time to pull my money out of that monstrous boondoggle that we simply called the Project. Many thought me a cowardly fool, but it was only a few weeks later that the Project collapsed in a cloud of mismatched dreams and worthless pieces of paper. I sat back in an easy chair of my own design and laughed, my fingers playing about in a bucket of money by my side.
“What will you do with your wealth now?” Lincoln wondered. His fringe of beard was like an ancient hedgerow bordering a rocky field fit for nothing more than the perambulations of an isolated bull.
“Well,” I considered, “Aside from getting my latest book printed up, I thought I’d just sit on it.”
“There are many worthy causes that could put your money to good use.” Lincoln informed me.
“Like what?” I was contemptuous and skeptical. I withdrew my hand from the bucket and dried it off on the hem of my garment.
Iris interrupted. She looked up from her loom and asked, “What’s the title of your book?”
“The Offhand Remarks of a Cautious Man.” I answered.
“Well, for one,” Lincoln continued, glancing at Iris, “There’s the State Loom Workers Re-Education Fund.”
“Hear hear!” Iris shouted, though she had returned to her work and her mind was no longer on the conversation.
“What else?” I asked.
Lincoln shoved his bony old hands into the pockets of his trousers and began to pace, his eyes on the floor.
“There’s the Miles Davis Forum, that ought to appeal to you.”
“What do they do?”
“Dress up in vintage clothes and give lectures.”
“I think I’ll pass.” I stood up and adjusted my toga.
“Please!” Lincoln cried. “I’m begging you! Spread that money around!”
I fixed the man with a look of impecunious parsimony.

Kangaroo in Red Coveralls

Now that the kangaroo in red coveralls has been adopted by the Miles Davis Forum as an unofficial ambassador of goodwill to the larger world, I feel that I can disassociate myself from the creature. I have already deleted him from my yearly well-wishing mailing list and expect to remove his photograph from the wall of my office within the week. There was a time when the kangaroo in the red coveralls and I were quite close, talking on the phone at least once a week, exchanging recipes, and dropping each other’s name in interviews on the nightly talk shows, but no more.
The celebrity magazines have speculated on the roots of the estrangement, but none have come close to the truth. Their ideas are the products of a diseased mindset. This document will confuse them. Philosophic differences coming between two people whose relationship has been a source of mutual gain? Incredible. And yet it is true. The actions of the Miles Davis Forum is just the last in a long series of events that I can no longer ignore.
“I smell microwave burritos.” The kangaroo said to me one day last spring on entering my kitchen. “Can I have one?” He asked. He had followed the smell to my plate and now stood over it, pointing with unrestrained desire.
“Sure.” I replied, though internally I was seething. The last of the microwave burritos and I was forced to share!
“Surely not the last.” Dale Davenport laughed when I had told him the story of my frustration.
“Yes, the last. They don’t make them anymore.” I thought I was going to cry, just like I did when my mother allowed my subscription to Highlights to expire and blamed it on me for unwittingly putting the “YES” sticker on the refrigerator along with the smiley face ones. I turned away from Davenport, closing the door on him when he tried to reason with me.
The other steps towards the unraveling of this friendship between the kangaroo and me were but steady, exponential increments between the burrito incident and the Miles Davis Forum’s selection. With a little imagination and a slide rule you can fill them in.
“Dammit,” I told my new friend the snake, “I wanted to wear the funky clothes and throw candy to the children!”

Greens

An extra serving of greens was all that stood between me and a complete systems failure. After receiving the necessary nutrition, I gave thanks to the appropriate deity, Gormacuphril, the head in the box, eternally waiting with a smile and a grunt of approval.
I arose from my thanksgiving and clutched the staff proffered to me by my assistant, Mr. Anders.
“I go now to meet the challenges of wayward youth.” I said as I faced a bleak horizon scattered with the surreal furnishings of our common ancestry.
“Shall I accompany you, señor?” Mr. Anders asked.
“No,” I said, for I had sensed the trepidation in his voice. “You stay here and prepare the soup. When the men of goodwill arrive, you will have something to feed them.”
“Yes sir.”
“Until my return then!” I cried and set forth, placing one foot before the other in the accustomed manner of our people from time immemorial and using the staff as a kind of “third leg” to relieve some of the burden of moving across the face of the earth from my aging frame.
“Back problems?” I remember Dr. Rubens asking me as I climbed onto the examining table.
“Me? No!” I laughed. “No, I just have a certain stiffness.” I gestured towards the vertebrae in question. “It usually goes away after I’ve danced around awhile.”
One could hardly call my trek across the wastes dancing, but my back loosened up significantly as I came closer to the pile of abandoned aircraft that dominated this zone. Once again I was grateful to Gormacuphril for the energy to work it out.
“You’re welcome.” The head in the box replied in its low, guttural voice.
“Who said that?” Someone asked.
I looked ahead and saw a man emerging from the shade beneath the wings of a disused airplane. Behind him were a crowd of similar men, each in the costume of the archetype of his choice.
“Men of goodwill!” I called out. “The soup is that way.”

The Placid Encumbrance

Beneath the waves of the warm, embracing sea, I spoke with an octopus whose embarrassment at being caught wearing red socks with a purple sweater was only exceeded by his irritation at having failed to obtain an ample supply of crackers and ornaments for just such an occasion as our little talk.
“I’m so sorry.” He said. “I meant to lay in some of those Triscuit things.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I insisted. I was on a diet and couldn’t indulge in all the delights of his table even as it was.
“And then there’s the décor.” The octopus went on, looking about.
The room was strung with fairy lights on strings, the walls covered with accumulations of toys and kitchenware, all spray-painted black. It wasn’t all that original, but I didn’t tell him that.
“It’s fine.” I said.
“No, no.” He shook his massive head. “I wanted to set up some mannequins in here; maybe create some sort of tableau. The meeting of Bismarck and Napoleon III, perhaps?”
“Yes.” I nodded, smiling at the thought. “Perhaps. You could have a sedan chair in here.”
“A what?” The octopus asked.
“A sedan chair.” I repeated. I drew a picture on the back of a subscription card to Dinglemeister magazine.
“Why?” The octopus asked, handing the card back.
I smiled like a man waiting for his grandmother to put away the gun.
“No reason.” I said. I took one last cracker from the plate. “Have you given any thought to the proposal?” I asked.
“You mean whether to allow you to return to the surface?” The octopus looked away. “I have given a great deal of thought to it, but, as you know, it is not I who decides such things. The lobster has the final say.”
“And how can I get in touch with him?” A chain of bubbles poured from my nose in my frustration.
“Here he is now.” The octopus replied, nodding towards the door.
I turned to look, but saw only another losing lottery ticket.

Photovoltaic Nosegay

A man in my position often finds himself compelled to attend social functions for which he can make little justification. The waste of time is the great iniquity, but I have resigned myself to it and, over the years, have learned to glean what I can from these situations.
Thus it was that I dressed myself as a spy and proceeded to the House of Whistling Boredom. Nominally a celebration marking the anniversary of Steve McQueen’s ascension to the Happy Hunting Ground, it was in fact an opportunity for Dr. Laftenshack to show off his new wife. I arrived with dark circles under my eyes and a gift of bath salts for the happy couple.
“How thoughtful!” Elizabeth Laftenshack, formerly governess to the Sorbet twins, thanked me as I stepped inside, handed her the gift, and sniffed the nostalgic aroma of many grown-ups packed together in the dead of winter.
“The wolves are out.” I commented, handing my coat to an attendant. “By morning the streets will be littered with body parts too tough for even their rapacious jaws.” I slipped away to investigate the areas of the house off-limits to the less bold invitees, leaving Dr. Laftenshack to explain my idiosyncracies to his blond acquisition with the bronzed bosom so wantonly displayed.
Under a bed in a room cleverly hidden in the neighbor’s backyard I discovered a tennis racquet.
“Hmm,” I mused, “Wooden. Someone is either a collector,” I speculated, rising to my knees and listening intently for the sounds of pursuit, “Or very old.” As I stole a couple of items small enough to fit into my socks, I reflected on my dual feelings towards the elderly. Of course, I hated them, with their indifference to their surroundings and their infuriating torpor, but I also respected many of them. Fine storytellers, some of them.
Later, timidly “mingling” with some of the other guests, I urged several to try to guess the scent of the flower in my buttonhole.
“Is it some kind of carnation?” One lady asked.
“Nope.” I giggled. “Try again.”
“Hawaiian rosewood?”
I shook my head, barely restraining my laughter. Little did they know that with each sniff they moved the hands of doom ever closer to midnight.

How I Arrange Flowers

You can take the previous story at face value or not, as is your natural inclination. It matters little to me. However, it is a fact that flowers and flower arranging are among my interests. Market research suggests that you would like to know more about these interests of mine, and therefore I hereby present this informative piece.
As with almost everything I have learned to do, I am self-taught in the art of flower arranging. I thumbed through a couple of books on the subject to get a feel for the general mindset informing the most common attitudes towards flower arranging, and then I bought a vase at the thrift store and picked some flowers from somewhere on the side of the road and took everything back to my lair. Being enamored of the Zen approach to life and art, if not an actual devotee, I threw the flowers into the vase and stood back to admire my creation. It looked pretty good to me and so was born my basic method.
Now, of course, I have refined my approach over the years. I have found that flowers alone simply don’t do it for me. It was the addition of extra-floral components that really plugged me into the excitement that is modern flower arranging. I believe the first non-traditional element that I added to an arrangement was the neck of a guitar I had broken in a drunken rage.
“Come take a look at this!” I yelled to my wife. I thought it was a clever and attractive commentary on the music to be found all around us in the natural world, but my wife didn’t agree.
“It looks stupid.” Was her judgment.
Of course, no arrangement lasts forever. The vases are reusable and one can always take photographs of the arrangements, but this is essentially an ephemeral art. I think that is much of the appeal for me. So much of what I do is intended for the ages, my monumental sculpture, my political work, my synthesis of architecture and landscaping. But pushing torn pieces of the day’s newspaper into a vase along with some daisies make a statement, I think, about how it all can come to an end right now, this very second, without any warning.

His Liver Sticks Out of His Coat

The truck driver’s gut was an enormous, protruding mass under his t-shirt. He appeared, to those with imaginations unsullied by television’s hypnotic embrace, to have some kind of creature like a sloth or giant caterpillar wrapped about his middle. A smaller, secondary protrusion from the gut inspired a couple of self-styled wits to remark that the truck driver was so fat that even his gut had a gut.
“That’s his liver.” A mannered, sensitive person would usually put in, speaking softly and trying to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings.
“Liver, eh?” Was the response, and indeed it was hard to believe. Policemen had been known to stop the truck driver for questioning in regard to the protrusion.
“Looks like you’ve got a small television or microwave oven under your coat.” They would say. “Mind if I take a look?”
“That’s my liver, officer.” The truck driver would protest.
“Sure.” The policemen would nod, reaching in and giving the lumpy cube of flesh a good pinch. The truck driver’s howl of pain was usually all the convincing they needed, though some found it necessary to follow the truck driver to the hospital, scanning his abdomen along the way with special equipment developed for locating robots lost in the swamps outside of town.
“Is he an alcoholic, Doctor?” Officer Mannerly asked.
“That’s the oddest thing about this case.” The doctor, suave and trim in his lab coat, replied. “Aside for a couple of beers on the weekend, the man, a truck driver in his late fifties, claims not to drink all that much.”
“Alcoholics are prone to tell lies.” The policeman reminded the doctor. “That’s one of the things we learn in our training.”
“Yes, but this man shows no signs of cirrhosis, which one would expect to find in a liver engorged and distended in this way.”
The policeman took a step or two towards the nurses’ station and back.
“And you’re sure it’s not some kind of small appliance cleverly concealed?”
“I’m positive.”
“Then what’s causing it?”
“Well,” The doctor began somberly, “Recent research indicates it could be the truck driver lifestyle. The fumes, you know.” He suddenly laughed.

Harvest

Autumn found the Limage twins engaged in the hardest work a man can do outside of facing up to yet another day at the post office: the harvesting of a crop of auto beans.
“What are auto beans?” Miss Watkins asked the grocer when she could get his attention for a moment.
“Auto beans,” Explained the sweaty, aproned old man, “Are the fruit of the chemovac pylon, which is not a plant, in any sense of the word as we know it, but a cunning facsimile thereof.” He wiped his forehead with a rag and turned back to the crowd of children clamoring for a sample of the new bologna.
Miss Watkins’ next logical question, “What is the chemovac pylon,” was addressed not to the grocer, but to her father, Dean Watkins, the famed defense attorney, although it was answered by Lord Flumph, an anthropomorphic bear whom Mr. Watkins was trying to save from a murder charge.
“Ah, the chemovac pylon!” Lord Flumph enthused, clapping his large, but clawless (mark that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury!) paws together and casting his mind back to the summers of his youth. “My uncle had a chemovac pylon by the pond on his farm.”
“It produces auto beans, right?” Miss Watkins asked, eager not to look completely ignorant.
“I don’t know about that.” Lord Flumph confessed with raised eyebrows.
“As Lord Flumph only spent his summers at his uncle’s farm, it is improbable that he should be acquainted with the harvesting of the chemovac pylon’s fruit, as that event takes place in the fall.” Dean Watkins reasoned closely, taking his pipe from his mouth and suddenly flipping through a large book of legal strategies.
“But I do know,” The talking bear continued, “That the chemovac pylon is dangerous. With its six abrasive tentacles and its horrible, rending orifice, it can kill and devour a cub in less time than it takes to scream.” He had leaned forward excitedly, but now sat back in his seat. “Fortunately, the chemovac pylon is immobile, much like a tree.”
“And that’s why harvesting the auto beans is such hard work?” Little Christopher asked Luke, the elder of the Limage twins.
“No.” Laughed Luke. “It’s because it’s easier to let them fall off by themselves.”

Shadow

One of the reporters asked, “Some have claimed that your shadow, as it appears behind you on the dais, lends a sinister counterpoint to your avowed public stance as a man of universal brotherhood. What do you say to that?”
“I say that anyone who would make such a claim,” I replied, allowing my infernal gaze to sweep the room, “Does not deserve to call himself my friend.”
A female reporter was next to ask a question.
“You say that such a person does not deserve to call himself your friend.” She began. “Does that mean that you only consider men your friends?”
I stared at her for a moment, then smiled expansively.
“I believe that’s all that time I have for questions.” I said. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.” I waved and turned away from the podium.
“Two things,” I said to my assistant, Ross. “Find out the exact definition of a rostrum. I want to know how it is differentiated from a dais. Second, who is that woman who asked me that stupid question?”
“I believe her name is Kendra Flatchit.” Ross replied as he held the door to the hallway open for me. “She works for Gifunkus magazine.”
“Gifunkus?” I repeated. “But that’s… Never mind. Tell purchasing to buy it and have her fired.” I entered a small antechamber to the left where I loosened my tie and allowed Ross to help me off with my coat. “Oh, and by the way,” I added as he then helped me to put on a long orange robe of soft felt. “Have somebody look at the lighting and see what can be done about that shadow.”
“I thought you didn’t care about it.” Ross reminded me.
“I don’t.” I insisted, my hand on the door that led to the room beyond. “I just want to see if it can be adjusted.”
Passing into the next room I put on an open, understanding face as I broke into song. The delighted cries of the small audience of children greeted my appearance. At the conclusion of my song I bowed to the children, both in the studio and watching at home, and took up the wand of indoctrination.
“Welcome, everyone, to The Cult of the Big Orange Program. I’m your host, Toadsgoboad.” The ecstatic cheer that followed was all I needed to take the bad feelings away.

Indenture

The terms of my indenture were explicitly laid down on the Tablet of Correspondence, a stone record kept in the Hall of Notoreity. It was a source of embarrassment and anxiety to me that anyone bearing a celebrity card could be granted admittance to the Hall and view the cursed, carved document.
One Monday morning following a weekend in which I attended a party where the fact of my indenture was unhappily revealed by an associate of mine, I hid in the mass of humanity across the street from the Hall of Notoreity to watch my worst fears realized. Tom Waits emerged from a taxi and ambled up the stairs of the Hall. He flashed his celebrity card at the aged man on guard at the door and passed inside. The man who sang “Going Out West” would see for himself what had so intrigued him on first hearing of it two days before! I could picture the scene: Waits standing before the niche wherein the Tablet lay, his hands in his pockets, his unshaven chin on his chest as he read the depressing words. Perhaps some lyric would immediately suggest itself to him, the basis for yet another song in a long series about wretched losers.
As I stalked away from the Hall, my steps turning inexorably towards the theater district, I could already see the marquee over one of the more experimentally inclined venues: “Mail Room Servant, starring Skeet Ulrich in the title role and Dwayne Johnson as the Wicked Supervisor.”
“I don’t have to take this!” I declaimed to a fellow pedestrian.
“You sure don’t.” He agreed.
“This wallowing in self-pity for appearance’s sake—it’s stupid!” I said to another.
“Leave me alone!”
“I’m getting out while the getting’s good!” I cried, this time to myself, as I stepped down into a sunken nook. I flashed a bundle of keys at the trained paralytic at the door and passed within.
“It’s scary out there!” I announced to the room at large.
“It’s about time you got here.” A man in the commonly accepted attire of middle management replied, glancing at his watch. “You can get started moving these boxes from this spot to that one over there.” He pointed across the room to the half-scale replica of the Oval Office. The small man sitting there waved to me in a most friendly manner.

Delay

As sorry as the representative of the train authority claimed to be for the delay, his emotional display was nothing compared to mine. I ripped one of the bench seats from its moorings in my rage, waiting, of course, until after the man had exited the compartment.
“Where will we sit?” Asked the young man who, along with his wife, were obliged to share the compartment with Bert and me. His tone, full of trepidation barely concealing annoyance, struck a sympathetic chord within my mighty mechanical heart. I knew what it was like to appear weak before one’s woman.
I smiled as apologetically as had the train representative minutes before.
“Don’t worry. I’ll fix it. I’m good at fixing things.” I wrestled the bench back into position and knelt before it. “Bert, hand me the small bag inside my valise, will you?”
He did so, though obligated in no way to assist me at all. Reaching inside, I pulled out a tool of unique design, made for me by a craftsman of unparalleled skill who has unfortunately since died. I say unfortunately because I would surely have loved for him to have fabricated a pair of comfortable shoes for me. None that I have seen in the stores suit me. Perhaps if I were to go back into the past… But that is fodder for some other tale. At any rate, in less time than it has taken me to ramble back to my point, I had the seat re-secured to the floor.
“There you are!” I said, slapping the vinyl and getting to my feet with a minor grunt of pain. “Good as new.”
The young man nodded and he and his new bride sat down. I looked at Bert, sitting there patiently reading a novel of suspense and decided that I had been raging needlessly. I always could do with extra reading time. What did it matter that the armies of stone were on my trail and it behooved me to exit the area as soon as possible?
“I’m going to go get a book too.” I declared.
“Whatever.” Bert replied, not taking his eyes away from the suspense.
Out on the platform at the newsstand I scanned the racks of paperbacks, finally selecting one, Pashko, Barbarian Archer. I had just handed the vendor my money when I heard the familiar sound of a train departing.

Free of Entanglements

Sam counted himself among the lucky ones. By his estimation, this select group comprised only about one percent of the population. Lucky, indeed, to be so favored. Of course, inclusion in the group was determined subjectively. Sam had no way of knowing for sure whether others included him among the lucky ones, though judging by their envious glances and outright hostility, he assumed they did.
His luck, until now limited in its expression to his large disposable income and relative good looks, had really manifested itself only this week, with Sam’s sudden liberation from all the niggling social obligations that had plagued him ever since his investiture with the purple sash. Now that that office had been abolished by federal fiat, he realized that he need never shake another hand again. No longer would he be required to bear with longsuffering and a grace he did not feel the boring conversation of some ill-educated manual laborer.
“I can barricade myself in the tower and spend all day going through old documents!” He said to himself in a flash of realization. “If I want to.” He added, looking at his reflection in the door of the microwave. He rubbed his chin. What did he want to do, now that he was free to do it?
Of course, he could start dating again. He shook his head and laughed. The first thing, he thought, is to shave. But, remember, to shave in luxury, without haste.
He ran a sink full of hot water and whipped up a foamy batch of shaving suds. For years now, ever since abandoning canned shaving cream, he had threatened to start using a straight razor. Now maybe he could. Time was abundant. He applied the suds to his face with the brush and then cut down each limbless, leafless trunk of his beard with the razor. He was a Paul Bunyan among men.
Afterwards, sitting in the autumn sunlight on the back porch of his house, Sam entertained the idea of tracking down his third grade teacher. He longed to tell her, to show her, just how well he had turned out. Perhaps she had heard of his investiture and followed his career as inspector general with pride. Maybe she considered that, in some small part, it had been her efforts and example that had contributed to Sam’s ultimate success.
How he longed to disabuse her of this notion.




Pulling the Horseshoe

The horseshoe, everyone agreed, needed pulling. As this chore had not been done in many seasons, however, no one was quite sure how to go about it.
“Let’s ask old Gurkey.” Suggested Bob. “He’ll know.” This sounded like a good idea, so everyone, except Rose and Michelle, who hadn’t finished compelling the pylon, and therefore had to stay, piled into Masterson’s jalopy and drove over to old Gurkey’s house, somewhere out near the dunes.
Jack and Bob went to the door of the little, weather-beaten cabin, the former rapping hard on it. There was no answer.
“Old Gurkey!” Bob commandingly summoned the occupant.
Jack and Bob looked at each other.
“Try the knob!” Sarah shouted from the jalopy. She was tired of sitting on Louis’ lap.
Jack, who had deep moral reservations about what he called “unlawful entry,” declined to try this approach, leaving it to Bob. The latter individual, unburdened by such a straitlaced code of behavior, took the knob in his hand. “It’s porcelain.” He thought. “That’s old.”
Aloud he said, “It won’t turn! It’s locked.”
Sarah reached across Mack and Deborah and opened the jalopy door. She climbed over everyone and got out, precipitating the egress of all the others. Sarah joined Bob and Jack on the threadbare porch. She looked through one of the windows.
“Can’t see anyone.” She said. “Put your shoulders to the door.”
Once again Jack and Bob looked at each other.
“I think that’s going too far.” Jack pronounced.
“Oh, for god’s sake, do it, Bob.” Sarah mimed the requested action. Bob complied and soon everyone was standing inside old Gurkey’s living room.
“It’s really more of a den, isn’t it?” Mabel asked, looking about at the framed prints of typical nautical scenes.
“Look at this!” Mack shouted from the bathroom. Everyone joined him, crowding together in the doorway, looking down at the skeletal remains tumbled before the toilet. Someone whispered something about flushing.
Back at the office Rose and Michelle, their personal assignment completed, took a look at the horseshoe and decided it didn’t seem too hard to figure out.

The Old Parliamentarian

Just before his death the old Parliamentarian, Wagstiff, summoned Broomwillow to his office and asked him to sit down in the chair before his desk.
“Lord Bacondip took a nap in that chair once.” Wagstiff reflected, pointing.
“Really.” Broomwillow replied, glancing down at the dog-eared patch of leather visible between his thighs.
“Before my time, of course.” Wagstiff continued. “I think he had just retired a month or two before I got my license.”
“You’ve been here a long time.” Broomwillow commented, having little else to say. He decided to get things moving. “What did you need to see me about?”
Wagstiff looked up at the younger man distractedly, having fallen into a brief reverie. The images in his head had been of the faces around General Slimfist’s breakfast table during that wonderful parliamentary retreat in the Ambicorkan moors forty years ago. Funny how one could never picture one’s own face as it had been. Perhaps film stars were blessed, or cursed, with such recall…
“Eh?” The old man croaked. “Oh yes.” He opened a drawer on his right and reached within.
Broomwillow was surprised, somewhat humorously, to see Wagstiff’s hand reappear filled with a heaping measure of gun.
“What’s that?” The younger man asked, thinking that Wagstiff, in making preparations for his forthcoming retirement, had decided to present him with a memento of their time together. Perhaps this gun had belonged to another of Wagstiff’s celebrated colleagues from days past.
“It’s a gun.” Wagstiff replied. “I’m going to shoot you. To kill you, in point of fact. And,” He held up his unoccupied hand. “Before you ask any foolish questions, let me tell you why I wanted you sitting in that chair when you die.”
“This is crazy!” Broomwillow barked and started to rise.
“Remain seated.” Wagstiff ordered. “It is vitally important that you be in that chair.”
“Well, I’m not going to be!” Broomwillow declared. He was already on his feet, the high wooden back of the chair between him and Wagstiff when the gun went off.
“Sir Manfred Mell died on that rug.” Wagstiff informed the corpse.

The Unseen Sniffer

Roland Emery, president of Global Standard Entitlements, sat at the head of the conference table.
“Gentlemen,” He said, “I have decided that ‘The Unseen Sniffer’ will be our flagship program for the coming year.” He had expected reaction to his statement to be strong, and he was not disappointed.
“You’ll forgive me for saying so, sir, but I think that’s crazy.” Chet Upton was the first to find his voice.
“What make you think I’ll forgive you, just like that? You’re assuming an awful lot for someone right out of college.” Emery folded a stick of expensive, imported chewing gum into the space between his brilliantly white, artificial teeth.
“It’s just an expression.” Upton gasped.
“Well, it’s a crazy one, to use your other egregious comment.” Emery turned to Rick Boldone on his right, a man whom he had relied on for the whole of his ten years at the top of Global Standard Entitlements. ‘“I will forgive him!’” He repeated. “Who is he to give me orders?”
“Roland,” Boldone made a spider of his hand on the conference table. “Getting back to this business of ‘The Unseen Sniffer;’ do you really think it’s wise to place so much emphasis on what is, to be frank, a fringe program? A program of limited appeal?”
“That,” Emery pounced, shooting down Boldone’s spider with a gun formed of his index finger and partially severed thumb, “Is exactly the point. Of course it’s a fringe program, a program of limited appeal, as you put it. I’m not saying that I expect ‘The Unseen Sniffer’ to be our number one gleaner of advertising dollars, nor am I saying that I expect it to be our number one rated show. I’m saying that we’re going to show the world the kind of company Global Standard Entitlements is. We’re the kind of company that can afford to have a show like ‘The Unseen Sniffer’ on the air. Hell, we’re proud of having such a distinguished program on our roster.”
“But, sir,” Chet Upton spoke up, “The flagship program? In the past that designation has been reserved for the centerpiece of our Thursday night lineup.”
Roland Emery looked up and down the table, glanced back at the interns guarding the doors. “Did one of you fart?” He demanded.

The Confusing Mime

“Just what is that mime supposed to be miming?” Mr. Grosvenor asked. He was standing in the window of his haberdashery, looking out on the street.
Talbot joined him in the window. He watched the stereotypically attired mime for some seconds before speculating, “Is he pretending to be attaching an exhaust hose to a dryer?”
“Ha ha.” Mr. Grosvenor said sourly.
“I’m serious.” Talbot protested. “We recently bought a new dryer and I had a devil of a time connecting the exhaust hose. What he’s doing reminds me of that.”
“Bobby,” Mr. Grosvenor called to another of his clerks. “Come here and take a look at this. What do you think that mime is trying to… express, if that’s the right word?”
Bobby Florence studied the mime’s performance.
“It looks like he’s acting out the murder scene from Agripunto.” He decided.
“What?” Mr. Grosvenor demanded. “Oh, the hell with this. I’m going out there and ask him.”
“He won’t tell you anything.” Talbot said. “They’re sworn to silence.”
“We’ll see.” Mr. Grosvenor growled over his shoulder.
Talbot and Bobby stayed in the window, waiting for their employer to reappear on the sidewalk before them. Just as Mr. Grosvenor did so, a customer entered the store. Bobby was forced to deal with him while Talbot remained. The latter man was amused to watch as the performer answered Mr. Grosvenor’s question with yet more pantomime. The mime appeared, as near as Talbot could make out, to be ingesting a series of small objects from a container, probably hard-boiled eggs from a basket. Now he was spinning about on one foot. He stopped and looked at Mr. Grosvenor with that mindlessly happy countenance that seems to be each mime’s ultimate fallback. The expression on Mr. Grosvenor’s face, however, was a study in aggravation. Talbot laughed silently. The old man had learned nothing.
“He’s just a damn idiot!” Mr. Grosvenor insisted on re-entering the store. He saw Bobby dealing with a customer and nodded curtly. He found Talbot still in the window.
“What did you find out?” Talbot asked. He assumed an expression of indifference, though his abdomen still hurt from laughing.
“Nothing.” Mr. Grosvenor snapped. “I think mimes should be banned from the sidewalk!”

I Proceeded to Ingest the Cola

I gave up caffeine nearly two years ago. I also gave up most soda pop, caffeinated or not, because it contains corn syrup. I don’t know exactly why corn syrup is worse for you than regular sugar, but I do know I don’t need the extra calories. However, when Skidrick the fosinsal offered me a cola brewed and bottled with his own furry paws, I had to accept. First of all, I was parched, as we say in the Kooky South, from my long trek to Skidrick’s doorstep across the arid plain and second, I wanted to do nothing to offend this unusual creature. I only hoped that I wouldn’t renew my addiction to caffeine.
Skidrick, being a fosinsal, was about eight feet tall. He had no neck. His enormous head began just above his sternum and extended far above his shoulders. Two long ears stood up on top of this head. He was completely covered with golden brown fur the texture and appearance of shag carpeting. Despite this, he was not a nudist. Few fosinsals are. He wore a loose-fitting pair of sky blue coveralls. His boots, which he didn’t wear indoors, were against the wall under a photograph of some monument of special significance within fosinsal culture. His face, though covered with slightly shorter fur than the rest of his body, yet looked surprisingly like that of Paul Newman, though with a nose similar to that of a proboscis monkey.
“I hope you like it.” Skidrick said as he handed me the bottle.
“I’m so thirsty.” I equivocated, noting the homemade label pasted on the bottle. I pried the top off with a small tool from my kit and took an experimental sip.
“Tasty.” I admitted before downing the rest of it.
“Do you want another?” Skidrick asked.
“No, I’d better not.” I shook my head, already worried about the onset of the drug’s effects.
“OK, what did you want to see me about?” Skidrick sat on one side of his kitchen table, I on the opposite.
“I…” I hesitated, holding up a shaky hand before my eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Skidrick asked. “Do you want a glass of water?”
“You have water?!” I demanded insanely.

Six Major Statements of the Tractor Man

The Tractor Man, dread sovereign of the small coastal region adjacent to Millie’s backyard, is remembered for his so-called “Major Statements,” six of which we will explore in the coming weeks. His “Minor Statements,” a collection off-hand remarks unintended for preservation, are not covered in this course.
Why only six of the approximately fifty major statements? The answer to this question, gentlemen, is that we simply don’t have time to cover them all. We will barely have time to explore adequately the six chosen statements before you have to get ready for your comprehensive examinations in your chosen fields. The six statements that have been selected for this course are generally considered the most important and, as the Tractor Man is a relatively minor figure in the overall history of the Flotcha Maja, therefore about as much as you are ever likely to need to know on the whole subject.
Now, it is important before we begin that you understand something of the circumstances in which the major statements were uttered. We know from the Analects of Grissom that the Tractor Man did intend these statements for posterity. He therefore put a lot of thought into them and they represent a crystallization of his vision. Some have theorized that because the statements were only written down and collected for publication after the Tractor Man’s death at the hands of Captain Plow that somehow the opposite is the case, but remember the Tractor Man’s first statement: “I am the Tractor Man.” This is a classic example of the primacy of identity, clearly showing the Tractor Man’s self-awareness as a public figure. He knew his place in society. He knew the value that he placed on his words and the value that would be placed on them by the successors to his office.
In general, each statement was made while the Tractor Man was in full costume, a thick plume of smoke emerging from his exhaust pipe headpiece. He would stand before the Council of Delegation and make his statement in a deep, superhero-type voice, while symbolic word balloons made of painted sailcloth, stiffened with rosin and outlined in rich charcoal, were carried about the chamber by young apprentices. The members of the Council of Delegation, each a fully licensed attorney or mechanic, would applaud the statement, either out of fear for their lives, or out of genuine appreciation.

The Others Must Be Punished

Skilled artisans employed by the Commission to recreate the Big Kitchen’s original décor found themselves stumped. Only Waglin Mulk, the janitor, saw a way through.
“Clearly these are photographs of exterior structures,” He explained, pointing at the lithographic depictions of the Big Kitchen as it was during the height of its glory, during the reign of King Cheesemuff. “Not abstract paintings.”
“How did he, a mere janitor, know that?” Francis, admitting the truth of Mulk’s insight, whispered to his colleague Jerome.
“Well, he is also an author.” Jerome pointed out.
“Yes.” Francis expostulated disgustedly. “Of self-published nonsense.”
Nevertheless, Mulk’s suggestion was accepted: that the framed pictures over the vegetable cutting counter were supposed to be photographs of structures. But what structures? Where were they to be found? Did they even still exist?
“Stop asking me so many questions!” Dink Harbingood, the Commission’s liaison with the project, begged.
“Well, what are we going to do, then?” Moset Rand interlaced his fingers and dropped his hands before his crotch.
“We’ll get Strassman to handle it.” Harbingood decided.
“Strassman?!” Rand repeated. “But… you said yourself he’s a loose cannon!”
“He’s the only man for a job like this.” Harbingood picked up the phone on his desk. “Marcia, get me Marvin Strassman.”
So it was that Strassman, called by some the most capable man in the universe, by others the most unstable, was assigned the task of locating the structures in the old photographs and re-photographing them.
“Try to reproduce the original photographs as much as possible.” Harbingood ordered. “The angles, the lighting, so forth, but if you can’t, just an approximation will do.”
“The others must be punished.” Strassman growled as he picked his teeth with the edge of a business card from his brother-in-law’s lumber emporium.
“What’s that?” Harbingood snapped. “What others?”
“The ones that say I’m unstable. ‘The most unstable man in the universe.’” He quoted with a dog-like, rasping laugh. He glanced at the business card. “That’s my price, Harbingood.

Legacies of Sweet Citrus

It was a mark of Skidrick’s respect for Strassman that he offered to share with him some of the citrus fruit from the basket he had been sent by Flagrum’s Lumber Emporium.
“No thanks.” Strassman replied. He dropped onto the sofa and massaged the recently scabbed-over wound on the back of his left hand. Danger was part of the overhead in his business, he reflected with grim, self-deprecating humor.
“Personally,” Skidrick said, grabbing a fat grapefruit. “I can’t get enough of the stuff. You know,” The working class fosinsal chuckled wistfully, “I still remember the first orange I ever ate.”
“Really?” Strassman smiled the smile of one who knows the pleasures of reminiscence. “How did it come about?”
“I was working in a small photography shop in old Camden town,” Skidrick cast his mind back over the decades. He leaned back in his custom-built La-Z-Boy, but did not throw the footrest up; that would have been too casual. “One day the old man who owned the place came back from visiting the drug store next door. He had a candy bar and a can of pineapple juice. I can’t remember the name of the candy bar, but it was one I’d never tried before; I know that.
“Mr. Wagonwheel, that was his name, saw me looking at the candy bar. ‘Have you ever had a Hornet’s Nest bar’ (or whatever it was called), he asked. I said no and held it out to me with his hand covering almost the whole thing. ‘Go on, break off a piece.’ He said. Well, the way he was holding the candy bar, I couldn’t do anything more than smudge up a little dusting of crumbs. I dropped them in my mouth and told him it was good even though I could hardly get a good taste out of it. Then he asked me if I had ever had pineapple juice. I said no, so he got out a plastic cup and poured me a couple of swallows. I drank it and later that day, after I’d gotten off work, I got to thinking about what else in the world I’d never tried and I realized I’d never tried an orange. So I went to the grocery store and bought one and ate it. It was OK, but it took me years to find out I preferred grapefruit.” His eyes were on the ceiling when he ceased talking.
“I’ll never eat an orange again.” Strassman’s voice was as soft as a smothering pillow. “They remind me of the sun.”

The Danish Have an Instinctual Feeling for These Things

My time in Copenhagen was marked by an almost indefinable sadness. I say almost indefinable because, while I, in the English tongue, am without adequate means to describe the way I felt, I found that the Danish concept of haakmøken perfectly encapsulates this kind of sadness. A couple of my associates on the Wheel of Pain wanted to know what I had been so sad about.
“If I knew that,” I told them, “I might have been able to put it into words.” I laughed, but they did not, so great was their supposed concern.
“Well,” Donna began thoughtfully, “What does this haamøken mean?”
“Exact translations are hard to come by,” I warned, “However, the closest thing I can think of is the kind of feeling you get when you realize that the times when you embarrassed yourself don’t bother you nearly as much as the times you remember when you embarrassed or hurt the feelings of someone else.”
“Well, that sounds like a pretty good definition.” Donna protested. They’re always looking for a way to trap me. They think I’m some kind of plaything.
“Yes, but that’s still not exactly it.” I waggled my hands. “You know, they say ancient Greek was a very precise language.” But, of course, Greek isn’t another word for pastry, and so the gathering broke up into its constituent elements, each to debate and discuss the issues raised during our time together. My dependents and I hunkered in a corner behind a crate labeled “machine parts” and hoped that the wind wouldn’t shift direction.
“I’ve got a secret!” I confided to them.
“What is it?” One of the little quasi-people I carry about with me asked eagerly.
“I’ve never been to Denmark per se…” I teased, “But I do have a couple of bear claws with me.” I smiled broadly, reached into a pocket, and brought forth the treats.
“You don’t stay sad for long, do you?” Another of my little friends commented as he took his share of the offering.
“Never.” I insisted. “Not when I can get away from the ignorant crowd.” I watched them eat for a few minutes. What delightful creatures! Dressed in their colorful knitted outfits and each possessed of a plethora of tentacles, they amused and ennobled me. As well they should, for I had invented them myself. Greedy bastards left me nothing.

Comparison of Itch Relief to Correction Fluid

The following comparison, a classic of its kind, has been made before, most notably by the Duc du Dingle in his second volume of war correspondence. However, I feel that my expostulation of the comparison is superior to his and to those of its other acclaimed delineators, if for no other reason than its having the unique quality of being made by me. But judge for yourselves, you intense devotees of distinction.
Itch relief, said the Steward of Walruses on the occasion of his birth, is like a salamander eating toasted almonds: one can almost believe in its existence, but one cannot quite visualize it without the accompaniment of appropriate music. Perhaps that is not quite what he said; I may have mixed up the quote with a passage from Eliot’s Fifteen Parsecs From the Deli. It is of no matter. The spirit expressed is the correct one. All the people in town agree with me, from the street sweeper’s assistant to the evil overlord who dwells in yon converted windmill. Now, as I mop up the drool of my predecessor at the table of literary labors, I recall that true itch relief, according to my grandmother, cannot be found in the tacky secretions of the emger plant, but in the satisfaction of one’s inner cravings after the one true god. Talk about the correct expression of spirit!
And talk about correction fluid, for that is what we are here for. Of course, one can attempt to provide itch relief by painting correction fluid onto the afflicted area. One of Napoleon’s descendants tried it and look what happened to him! Sometime it truly is best to follow the directions.
We all have heard the story that the mother of Mike Nesmith (late of Captain Beefheart’s last, sadly undocumented incarnation of the Magic Band) invented correction fluid, but how many of you have heard the cry of the itchy naked mole rat, feverishly trying to complete his essay on the necessary trade-off between self-awareness and alienation? Oh, how he hates the endless comparisons between his species and social insects! If only they knew how offensive such comparisons were! Perhaps, he suggested in a recent letter, an attempt at listing contrasting qualities and aspects might be a more constructive approach?
“My dear Mr. Naked Mole Rat,” I replied, “I do not know why you have come to me with this proposal. The logical target of your attentions is the Duc du Dingle, the source of much of my own current discomfort.”

Mr. Vrontag’s Spectacular Embouchure

“The way he puckers up to the mouth-piece!” Enthused Roland of the Seven Hills, spiritual successor to Monad the gardener. “It is unique!”
Brad, who used to run the video rental place next to Mama Cedric’s pizzeria, nodded in agreement. “They call it Vrontag’s Kiss.” He straightened his tuxedo t-shirt. “He can produce sounds on the trumpet that no one else can.”
“Excuse me,” A small, exquisitely dapper man quite evidently in his twilight years turned to Roland and Brad. “But do either of you know if Mr. Vrontag has attempted to use his spectacular embouchure on any instruments other than the trumpet? Say the trombone, for instance?”
“There are some early recordings on the Gluten-Free label…” Brad began.
“With the Dan Dukes big band.” Roland interposed.
“… on which Vrontag experimented with the trombone. However, except for his brief flirtation with the tuba in the late sixties, he had devoted himself exclusively to the trumpet.”
“Ah, I see.” Said the older man. “Thank you. I just wondered what a man gifted with his extraordinary labia might do with a saxophone.”
“Completely different approach.” Roland sniffed, drawing his upper body back as if easing into a coffin of academia.
“With the saxophone it isn’t the lips that are the vital mouth part, but the tongue.” Brad tapped his own fleshy, tasting organ.
“Indeed.” Roland concurred.
“Vrontag’s equivalent on the saxophone…” Brad mused. “Now who would that be?”
“Of course there is no exact equivalent to Vrontag’s lips.” Roland was quick to point out.
“Keith Moon’s polyphrenic ligaments? Marion Barry’s striated nostrils?” Brad demanded respect for these examples. “What about the excruciating spatulature of Jörg Immendorff?”
“True, but…” Roland stepped up to Brad’s challenge. The older man returned his attention to the empty stage as the two men continued to debate. Back in the dressing room a nervous Mr. Vrontag sat before the mirror. He delicately stroked an enormous handlebar moustache that nearly obscured his famous mouth.
“Do you think they’ll accept it?” He asked his manager for the tenth time.

Flong Sees the Valley for the First Time

The four men had been selected for their brawn, not their wit. Thus, while each of them handled his share of the weight of Flong’s litter with ease, it was up to Dr. Rubens to enhance Flong’s enjoyment of the journey with a constant stream of interesting facts and comments about the valley and the surrounding area.
“And did you know, Mr. Flong,” Continued Dr. Rubens, “That Mount Crunch, which we will be able to see on the opposite side of the valley once we reach the overlook, was the site of the Battle of Gifford’s Pork?”
“No, I didn’t.” Flong replied wearily. While he reclined on the litter nursing a sore foot and an injured sense of ostentation, Dr. Rubens walked alongside, taxed hardly at all by his exertions. Damn healthy physician!
Meanwhile the four men carrying Flong to the overlook, where he would see the valley for the first time, kept their minds strictly on their jobs. Small rocks abounded on the slope. To drop Flong would mean more than the promise of a sound beating. Flong was to be the valley’s new administrator. The hopes of a hundred families rested on him. To incur his wrath would be most unwise.
“These trees that you now see about you are what the locals call hippo apple. They bear a fruit that…” Dr. Rubens tried to draw Flong’s attention to the flora, but was suddenly interrupted.
“Enough!” Cried Flong. “I would ride in silence for awhile.”
“Very well.” Dr. Rubens replied. They were near the summit anyway. The only sound for the next five minutes was that of the bearers’ grunting and gasping. Then Dr. Rubens quietly spoke.
“Careful now.” He addressed the men. “We should be just about there.”
Indeed, only a few paces along they came to the overlook, a gap in the trees at the top of this rather slump-shouldered “mountain” from which they could look down into the valley.
“That’s it, Mr. Flong.” Dr. Rubens gestured. “Collard Valley.”
Flong stared for a full minute. Dr. Rubens watched as his eyes, normally so sleepy-looking, raked the landscape from the left to the right.
“And this whole area is in danger of flooding?” Flong asked.
“Yes, Mr. Flong.” Dr. Rubens answered. “If the dam isn’t stabilized.”
“OK.” Flong sighed. “I’ve seen enough. Take me back down.”

The Mustard Embargo

Since the full history of the Mustard Embargo, its social and political ramifications and the panoply of famous figures at its heart, is beyond the scope of this piece, I thought I would instead focus on how the Mustard Embargo affected one small, lower middle class family living in the port city of Ramshackle. As we join this family, the Eggwoods, in their modest home in the shadow of the Moongatherer’s tower, Mr. Eggwood, a humble banana sorter, has just returned to his house following a routine, but tiring shift at the bananarie.
“Whose shoes are these?” Milton Eggwood demanded as he stepped inside the front door and kicked off his own size thirteens.
“Tina left them there yesterday when she got home from school.” Mrs. Eggwood, the former Brenda Flair, answered her husband, cleaning rag, snatched up at the sound of his key in the lock, in hand.
Milton pondered this for a moment.
“Then what did she wear to school today?” He wondered.
“She didn’t go to school today.” Mrs. Eggwood replied. “She’s sick.”
“Sick, eh?” Milton growled. “We’ll see about this!” He tossed the bagful of old magazines he had salvaged from the trashcans behind the Moongatherer’s tower onto the sofa and went to his daughter’s room. He found her lying in bed reading a magazine from an earlier scrounging effort.
“So you’re sick, huh?” Milton tried to sound stern and doubtful, but the reservoir of his concern shone through his words like sunlight through closed eyelids.
“Yes, Dad.” Tina croaked. She had a sore throat and a mild fever.
“I brought home some more magazines. You want to go through the bag?”
“Sure.”
Milton retrieved the bag, passed it over to his daughter, kissed her forehead, and went to the kitchen.
“What’s for supper?” He asked his wife.
“I thought we’d have hot dogs.” Was the reply.
“Sounds good.” Milton nodded. “But… what are we going to put on them?”
Mrs. Eggwood frowned thoughtfully and shrugged.
“Damn this embargo!” Milton shook his head in despair.

Diseased and Hidden

When I accepted Burfukin’s offer to include me among the group of graduate students going to Lower Frickensaal to investigate the mysterious debris recently found there, I hadn’t realized that Burfukin himself would not be going.
“You mean I’m on my own?” I wailed into the phone at the airport just minutes before boarding the plane.
“On your own?” Burfukin repeated perplexedly. “You’re with thirteen highly competent young people!”
“Yes!” I agreed. “Young people! I’ve got nothing in common with them. And they know it. I already overheard one of them mocking my hat.”
“Toadsgoboad,” Burfukin admonished me as only he can, lading my name with a cargo of expectations it was never intended to bear.
“OK, OK,” I snapped. “The plane’s boarding, I’ve got to go”
Later, while my companions chatted amiably, tossing some sort of ball back and forth among themselves and plugging into various devices for the absorption of discrete portions of their depraved culture, I sat uncomfortably, waiting to be launched into the void.
“You’ve flown before, yes?” The young woman sitting beside me, a member of the investigating group, asked.
“Oh yes.” I affirmed heartily. “It’s just that each time has been my avowed last. After the incident in the Zednought Mountains I really swore never to fly again, yet here I am.”
“What happened in the Zednought Mountains?” She asked wide-eyed and awestruck.
I glanced at her as a spy might at a beautiful novice.
“I am not permitted to say more.” I lied. “However, the whole story is in M.H. Haberall’s The Man in the Rainwater Barrel, heavily disguised, of course.” This last I said knowingly, hinting that a bright young woman like her should be able to read between the lines. To this she readily agreed.
Of the subsequent flight and our three months in Lower Frickensaal I must necessarily pass quickly over. Let it suffice you to know that the “mysterious debris” turned out to be ordinary household garbage and that many people who had hitherto expressed contempt for the “old man” who accompanied them were forced to revise their opinions after the heavy shit came down.

They Had No Means to Rouse Him

The giant lay unconscious in the rude throne formed from the collapse of the water tower. His snores had brought the townspeople to gather before him.
“Does anyone know who this is?” Curtis DeStrangler asked amid the babble of voices. He stood atop a plastic milk crate and pointed at the giant. As no one seemed to have an answer, DeStrangler singled Fudge Wills, the town’s mayor, out from the crowd.
“Well, we’ve got to do something about this.” He directed his words at Wills.
“He’s asleep.” Wills pointed out, as if there was a universal law of etiquette regarding such situations.
“Fudge, the men from the Department of Infrastructure are supposed to be here today to begin repairs on the water tower.” DeStrangler explained. “We’ve got to get him out of here.”
“Won’t they be responsible for moving him?” Barbara Krudd asked. “Just as they would if some leaves of branches had fallen on the tower?”
“This is stupid.” Connor Brandemill whispered to his friend Matador. “Let’s go. It’ll take them all day to figure this out.” He added across the top of his car as he opened the driver’s side door.
“How do you think a giant wound up passed out in the wreckage of your town’s water tower?” Matador asked as he buckled up.
“God knows.” Brandemill replied. “But this kind of thing happens all the time around here. Once an armada of dirigibles flew off with the church steeple.” As he cranked his car several people in the crowd turned to stare. How could anyone leave this disturbing scene? Oh, it’s the Brandemill boy. He’s always been a little strange. Intelligent, but strange.
“And one time,” Brandemill continued as he headed back to his parents’ house. “One of the old drunks that live here built a personal flying saucer out of a chicken feeder trough.”
“Really.” Matador knitted his brows together.
“Those are the trees he knocked down in it.” Brandemill pointed.
As they got out of the car the two young men heard a cacophony of car horns sounded at once a mile and a half away.
“They’re going to get more than they expect.” Brandemill predicted.

A Scattering of Artifacts Incites Nationalistic Feeling

The excitement over Trip Aaron’s death in his homemade flying saucer had only begun to reach its peak when further fuel was added to the fire (“This is more than one man can take!” exclaimed Doc Vetman as he wiped the sweat from his brow.) by the discovery of nearly a dozen bizarre artifacts in the dirt around the crash site.
“Evidently Trip’s craft plowed up these items.” Brock Yammer, who worked for the university, theorized. He and a group of the town’s most prominent men had gathered in their tiny city hall to examine the find.
“How long do you think they’ve been buried?” Rondo Gavel, the editor of the local paper, The Bunworthy Fundamentalist, asked.
“Well, I only work in the Home Economics Department, you understand, but I would say a very long time.” Yammer tapped his watch for emphasis.
Fudge Wills, the seven-term mayor of Bunworthy, drew himself up from peering at the collection of objects spread over the town council’s conference table and inhaled deeply through his nose preparatory to delivering himself of a weighty profundity.
“Friends,” He began, “This discovery will put our little town on the map.”
Several of the men in the room, Yammer and Gavel among them, glanced at the county map mounted just behind Wills, where the name Bunworthy was printed for all to see. Wills rolled his eyes to the extreme left and inhaled once more.
“I’m going to call the governor.” He announced, returning his gaze to his fellow Bunworthians. He made for the phone.
“What for?” Yammer asked.
“This is big.” Wills replied.
“Yes, too big for our little town.” Yammer worried. “Those big shots, the university men they’ll bring in, they’ll crowd us out.”
“We can’t keep it a secret.” Gavel pointed out.
“Hello?” Wills roared into the phone. “This is Fudge Wills, mayor of Bunworthy. I need to speak to the governor! This is a matter of archeological and historical importance!”
The viceroy, having been in turn contacted by the governor, gave specific directions to his underlings. “Send somebody big down there to take care of this.” He ordered. “We can’t run the risk of any foreign agents getting their hands on these artifacts.”

The Bear Attends the Badger’s Reading

Murl the Badger had known that his reading of selections from his new book would not be enough to draw the crowd he wanted, nor to leave it with a feeling of having received a full evening’s worth of entertainment. Thus, Murl had arranged for the Kent Windsock Quintet to play both before and after he had given his reading.
One person who did not require the presence of the musicians on the roster was Trajik the Bear. As a matter of fact, he was put off by the kind of contemporary smooth Jazz that Kent Windsock played. “It’s just too slick.” He often complained to friends. “It’s the kind of music that ethnics put on to make love to.” On hearing this complaint, Trajik’s friends would usually cock an eyebrow and repeat “Ethnics?” with disapproval.
However, such was Trajik’s appreciation for Murl’s writing that he was willing to put up with Kent Windsock and the unadvertised surprise addition of two background vocalists moaning about “an oasis in the ghetto.” He did question whether this was the best Murl could do, putting this thought down in a small notebook he carried in a pocket in his adventurer’s type vest. “Is Murl the Badger so unappreciated in this city that he can only get these crappy performers to be seen with him?” Trajik wrote. “Or, and I cannot believe this, can he be unaware of the concrete crappiness of this kind of Jazz?”
The name of Murl the Badger’s new book was Benny’s Snakes. It was a novel concerning the efforts of the evil General Holiday to secure absolute control over his planet of origin using a powerful mind-control device. But of course, as with all of Murl’s fiction, that was merely the backdrop for a host of subtly interconnected stories.
“‘Francis lifted the whip once more.’” Murl read aloud. His voice was strong and flexible, itself like a whip; he gave each character a unique sound. Trajik nibbled the ends of his claws in nervous excitement. “‘“Please, Mr. Francis, don’t hit me again!”’ Marla cried out, jerking the rag off her head in fear.”
“This is outrageous!” Trajik heard a bearded, middle-aged man at the table to his right mutter.
Murl paused in his reading to peer over his glasses at the man.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” He said to the audience, “Mr. Bob James.”

Nonsteroidal Ambiguity

Despite his misgivings Whaggum did not alter the story. It was included, along with the others he had written during the long winter, in the collection, Have We No Conscience?, and published the following year. He heard nothing for some time; his books had limited appeal anyway. Only a small fringe publishing house like Fish Stick would ever be willing to publish his work. Finally, however, he received the letter he had been waiting for.
“Mr. Whaggum, I had no idea you were a racist! Your story, ‘Consumption in the Time of Funk,’ has both sickened and disillusioned me.” It went on from there much as Whaggum had expected. It was signed, “Darla Shipmate.”
“I figured the odds at fifty-fifty whether she would include her address.” Whaggum told his personal assistant, Glader.
“But how will you find her?” Glader, holding the envelope, asked as he watched his employer pack a suitcase with the Star Trek-inspired clothing he preferred. “This is a post office box.”
“Yes, but from a small town. I looked Frankville up in the atlas. It only has a population of two hundred. In a town that small I’ll surely be able to find her.” Whaggum closed the suitcase and extended his hand. “So long, Glader. If you don’t hear from me in two weeks, contact Fish Stick house. Tell them to proceed with the collection of my juvenilia.”
“Good luck.” Glader wished Whaggum. The doubt showed on his face.
Frankville was a two-day drive north into the cod and maple syrup district. Whaggum spent the night at a hotel along the way where he got an idea for a play. Although he disdained titling things beforehand, he knew he would call it Running From the Waffle. The main character would be a poor ex-lumberjack, steadfast in his devotion to the occult practices that had excluded him from society.
Giggling to himself, Whaggum lay on the lumpy bed writing dialogue. He had many good ideas for scenes involving Pat, the lumberjack, and the various characters who would stop by the small pharmacy he had opened. Eventually, exhausted by his efforts, Whaggum decided to order a pizza. When it arrived, he was stunned to see that the delivery person was Carl Burling, a classmate from high school. “What are you doing here?” Whaggum asked, but the answer was abstruse and unsatisfactory.

The Trees of Gomez’ Passion

As Gomez gathered leaves from the lower branches for his supper, two homburg-topped agents from Central Sulfuric sat watching him from inside a car across the street. The car was old, so old that it didn’t have headrests on its bench seats, but it was clean. Its paint job was flawless, the interior spotless. Agent Grob, the one behind the wheel, had specifically requested this vehicle, not because of its condition, however, but because its radio, also vintage, was inadequate by modern standards. It did not have any means of playing outside media. The CDs that Agent Sina, the one in the passenger seat, had brought along were useless.
Sina sat fuming while Grob noted Gomez’ appearance on a small pad.
“Subject is attired in what appears to be a uniform inspired by those worn on Star Trek, the original series,” Grob said aloud as he jotted the words down, “Not that Next Generation crap.”
“Are you going to write that last part down too?” Sina, who could not read Grob’s shorthand, asked.
“Of course not.” Grob sighed.
“You know, you could have told me there wasn’t a CD player in the car before I lugged all these out here.” Sina groused, referring to the bag of music he had brought.
“Sorry.” Grob did not take his eyes off Gomez. The latter had filled a basket with the tenderest leaves he could find and was now scouring the ground for nuts fallen from the upper branches.
“What kind of trees are those?” Sina asked.
“I don’t know.” Grob replied. “Some kind of pecan?”
“Pecan leaves aren’t edible.”
“OK, so they’re not pecans.”
The two agents sat in silence for a minute.
“You can’t even pick up any decent radio stations on this thing.” Sina twisted the knobs on the radio vainly.
“Thank god.” Grob growled in relief.
Sina stared at his fellow agent’s profile.
“You’re a shit, do you know that?” The corners of his mouth turned down with bitterness.
“He’s heading back to the house.” Grob announced, glancing at his watch.

I Remember This Title

While rummaging through the linen closet in preparation for winter I came across the unfinished manuscript for Superintendent Kertow’s autobiography. I read the title with amusement: The Algebraic Nemesis on Impromptu Island. Oh, what high hopes Kertow had had for its publication!
“Maybe they’ll make a movie out of it!” He enthused as he held a steaming mug of hot chocolate under his sparsely whiskered chin.
I smiled in return. “You know,” I said, “In Great Britain they call them films.”
“And in the Aldufig Union they call them kirshpufer. What’s your point?” Kertow put down his mug with a definite sound of ceramic against wood.
I think it was at that moment that I decided to do whatever I could to sabotage his literary ambitions.
I thumbed through the pages of the manuscript. Kertow had cleverly disguised his autobiography in the form of hundreds of short stories in which a myriad of characters spoke for (and against) him. He did not limit himself to the events of his life, but also included his opinions on subjects ranging from the banal to the sublime. The pages were water stained from the rain that fell the night I stole the manuscript from Kertow’s overturned car, leaving the man himself bleeding and unconscious. He lived, but it was over a month before he remembered the book.
Don’t pity him. His distress at losing nearly a year of work was soon subsumed in what was later to become his life’s calling: writing plays. I tried to distract him, but failed.
“What about your job?” I reminded him.
“The building can find someone else to take care of it.” He replied, not looking away from the model of a set design.
“You know,” I tried again, “This is a tough town to try to make it as a playwright.”
“Really?” He snapped, sparing me a terrible glance. “Where is it easy to make it? Tell me, and I’ll go there.”
I stalked from his rooms and descended to my laboratory deep beneath the Monument to Brotherhood. There I painted an allegory of my frustration. When the men from the gallery came to choose pictures for my next exhibition they were immediately drawn to this colossal canvas. However, on being told that it was called, “Smear Me with the Shit of a Thousand Leprous Clowns,” they moved on.

Brute Indifference to the Skeptical Review

Bronson tossed the latest issue of Beet Enthusiast onto the coffee table and sat back on the sofa, hands folded over his belly.
“Well?” Brolin, his cousin, asked.
“I will proceed with my plans.” Bronson replied. His eyes roamed among Brolin’s collection of men’s adventure paperbacks, each series in sequence on the bookshelves to his right.
“Even after reading that?” Brolin was incredulous.
“That’s just one man’s opinion.” Bronson stubbornly stated.
“Well,” Brolin nodded dismissively, “It’s your money.”
“It certainly is.” Bronson interjected.
“But it sounds to me like that deflanger is nothing but a scam.”
“Something tells me it’s not.”
“It certainly isn’t informed, objective analysis.” Brolin characterized his cousin’s reason thusly. He trusted the opinions of the experts and if the young, cosmetically appealing people writing for Beet Enthusiast didn’t count as experts, then he didn’t know who would. Who was Bronson to reject their advice? He hadn’t finished college.
The two men’s argument ground to a halt as the sun set and the children reentered the house tired from their exertions and hungry for supper.
“How about we order pizza?” Brolin suggested, to the cheerful affirmation of the kids.
“You eat what you want,” Bronson loftily snorted, “I’m eating my beets.”
Brolin glanced at Bronson, but said nothing.
In the days to come the women, returned from their mountaintop retreat, were to reassert their control over the details of the household routine. For now, however, it remained for Jed, the robotic servant, to keep track of whose socks were whose and to try to get the beet juice stains out of Mickey’s t-shirt.
“It is most peculiar, sir.” Jed told Brolin. “But this stain appears to be in the shape of the standard character for the Baragese word ‘siedo.’”
“What does that mean?” Brolin asked.
“Muffin.”
Brolin mused on this as he sat down with The Paralyzer #27.

Sally’s Second Edition

Another hard week at the offices of Murphy Brothers Paper Mine had ended. Sally wished her two closest co-workers a pleasant weekend and walked towards her car. Her mouth fell open when she saw the small blue ribbon tied around her car’s antenna.
“Burgo’s back in town.” She thought. “So!”
In the past she might have been frightened, but now, after the death of Willie and all the other tragedies she had endured over the previous year, all this combined with her end-of-the-week weariness; she felt only an angry determination. Snatching the ribbon off the antenna, Sally entered her vehicle and turned on the radio. The hit songs of her senior year of high school fed the fire in her belly.
Sally’s home was a converted, land-bound yachting sphere bequeathed to her by the city council out of sympathy for her bereavement. She expected to see Burgo sitting on the steps or leaning on her mailbox, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe he was lying in wait at her old house. She hoped so.
She got out of the car and checked her mail. There was a thick, padded envelope inside the box. The return address was Taltra, Gibsofornia. Of course! It must be the book she ordered. This was confirmed once she got inside the roughly kettle-shaped dwelling. The package did indeed contain an original second edition of Mawl Protonsil’s Flag-Waving Witch at the Bald Man’s Throat.
“All known copies of the first edition are owned by Major Davenport.” Sally remembered as she thumbed through the book. As she idly fantasized about reading the book, she discovered that the bookseller had included a free bookmark. It was a thin blue ribbon imprinted with the words, “Two eyes to see/but only one mouth/who would suspect/there’s brains in the south?” Sally’s gasp of shock at the coincidence turned into a brief scream of surprise when Burgo emerged from the trashcan and sneered,
“Taken up reading, Sally? I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Burgo!” Sally barked, recovering herself. She slammed the book shut. “Get the hell out of my house!”
“House!” Burgo sneered again. “This beached boat is a house?”
“I’ve learned how to deal with bullies like you!” Sally’s words came through clenched teeth. She stomped over to the knife rack.

Another Arboreal Brokerage

“I have to say, I’ve never heard of beet trees.” Count Festif said to Brown, his host and informant. The two men, accompanied by their respective floating spheres, were walking through the extensive greenhouses of the late Granny Purnblack.
“Well,” Brown admitted, “They’re not actually beets, but they do have many of the same qualities.” He reached up and plucked one of the round, dark, tuber-like fruits from an overhanging branch. His sphere made one half-rotation in response. He held the “beet” out to Count Festif. The count’s sphere, in turn, lowered itself several inches in the air. “They’re edible.” Continued Brown. “They can be processed to make sugar, and their juice can be used as ink.”
“Is the taste similar to real beets?” Festif asked. His hands caressed the beet as if it were a well-seasoned baseball.
Brown shrugged. “I don’t think so, but then I like beets and my taste buds are unusually perceptive. Still, they’re not bad.”
The count considered.
“What do you think, Chalky?” He asked his sphere. He pronounced the sphere’s name in the academic manner, that is to say, he actually pronounced the letter “l.” The sphere emitted a smoky beam of green light that enveloped the beet in its master’s hand.
“Analysis indicates the presence of various impurities related to the environmental condition known as vulgarama.” The sphere spoke in the voice of Audrey Hepburn. This was a deliberate choice on Festif’s part. It had cost a little extra, but the other options were unacceptable. “Can you imagine,” He had asked his cousin Renae, “A sphere speaking in the voice of Dan Quayle?”
“Or the voice of reason, for that matter.” Renae, whose bias against the floating attendant spheres is well known, had replied.
“Objection!” Brown’s sphere, sounding very much like Jimmy Durante (an exact duplicate of the late actor’s voice was unavailable, as his heirs had forbidden its use), cried, “Chalky’s analysis is incorrect. I detect no such contamination.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Chalky asked, spinning about once and moving closer to his fellow sphere. Almost simultaneously, shining hooks emerged from the surface of each sphere.

Squirrelly Penmanship in Minor Key

The legibility of the document, according to Monadnas, the baseline supplicant, was entirely dependent on whether one had consumed a sufficient quantity of ouibo, a liquor brewed by the local peasantry from the droppings of the false lumber snake.
“The bulk of the snake’s diet is made up of Thorsen’s black frogs, which, as you know,” Monadnas drunkenly explained, “Produce a mildly psychoactive substance in their gonads. Hence, the snake’s feces, in turn, is a rich source of the duobaconoids that lend the ouibo its unique kick.”
“That is all most engrossing.” Major Davenport replied, standing like a lighthouse over the ship-killing rocks of Monadnas’ slouching form. “But can we please get back to the document?” The major tapped the much-folded sheet of paper. “What does it say?”
“Well,” Monadnas drew himself up and held the paper at arm’s length. “It says, ‘How would you like to know the secret method by which Rectanglo produced his intriguing masterpieces? For years art experts have debated…”
He was interrupted by Major Davenport’s assistant, Lloyd Welch.
“Excuse me, sir,” He addressed himself to the major. “But this just came in over the televacuum.” Welch handed Davenport a piece of paper.
“Want me to read that for you?” Monadnas asked. His eyes were bloodshot. His hooded sweatshirt was stained in the front from the beet juice he had sloppily mixed with the ouibo an hour earlier.
“No thank you, I think I can manage.” Davenport answered. He glanced over the paper and looked up at Welch. “Reply as follows: ‘Forgery impossible due to factors inherent in technique. As to legitimacy of central figure, probability fifty-fifty.’ That will be all, Welch.”
“Yes sir.” The assistant, a competent man in all respects, glanced with disdain at Monadnas before exiting the room.
Monadnas noted Welch’s look and shouted at his back, “I note your disdain and I disdain your note!” He cackled once and looked at Davenport. “That’s telling him, eh Major?”
Davenport tapped his chin with the message from Central Sulfuric.
“I think we can dispense with your services for the remainder of the day.” He said.


Counterfeit Interlude

In between my adventure at the House of Fish Stick and my exciting time among the People of the Tangerine Veil, I took some time off and paid a visit to one of my favorite stores (or shops, as you call them in Great Britain), Trade-A-Treasure. Its subterranean location makes it particularly cozy and the fact that it is staffed by a rotating group of feeble old ladies makes it especially easy to shoplift from. Even if I’m not in the mood to steal, it’s still a fun place to poke around in. Besides, most of the really interesting stuff is too large to fit under my coat.
On the day under review rain was coming down from the sky in a gentle, but constant flow that made the prospect of visiting the quiet, warm store all the more delightful. I nodded at the old lady behind the counter, but she, with a worried expression, busied herself with a stack of old books. As usual, barely audible music was coming from somewhere, but I could never discover its source. I made my way through the maze of rooms to one of my favorites, the room where the sculpture was displayed.
While examining a hideous collection of netsuke and, incidentally, debating whether I should bother stuffing one up my sleeve, I heard the sound of voices from the next room. With a wariness born of more than one encounter with Mr. Policeman, I investigated.
A screen had been set up in this room some time ago. Behind it a young woman with what I believe to be some kind of interpersonal disorder sat every day painting tiny canvases of flowers. I had learned to avoid her, to avoid interesting myself in her work. All previous efforts had been irritatedly rebuffed. Yet today a man was behind the screen with her. They were talking, softly, it was true, but rather animatedly. I looked about at the framed examples of the woman’s work, listening all the while. Her work, by the way, was poor, yet I admired her devotion to its production.
“It should be a simple matter for you.” The man said.
“I told you I’m not interested.” The woman replied.
“Not interested in making money?” The man couldn’t believe it.
“But you mean making money literally.” She protested.
“Shh!” The man cautioned. “I think the shoplifter is eavesdropping.”

A Ten Dollar Bill is Hidden in Book on the Sixth Floor

Having defeated the witch doctor’s schemes and hopefully taught the People of the Tangerine Veil that true happiness lies in the adoption of reason and science, I turned my attention to the rumors that MRZT, a local radio station, had been promulgating of late.
“Are you the guy that’s been talking about the ten dollar bill in the library book?” I asked a bearded scoundrel in the hallway of the station.
“No, man. That’s Dave Higgins.” The man pointed. “He’s in the broadcaster’s little room thing right now.”
I nodded. No smile for him. This was serious business and required that a serious demeanor be displayed. I started down the hall.
“But, hey, man, you can’t go in there right now. Dave’s on the air.” The bearded fellow called after me.
I dismissed his concerns as easily as I flashed my official identification and continued with my mission. The shag carpeting and wood paneling that lined the narrow hallway, as well as the vaguely psychedelic posters that lined those paneled walls convinced me, if nothing yet had, that this truly was a radio station in the early 1970’s. I considered just how much more purchasing power a ten dollar bill had in the current time period. Perhaps, some slothful part of my persona suggested, it would be better to let things go. After all, this traitorous part continued, with the passage of years the bill would become less valuable and the impetus to retrieve it would thereby lessen. Your precious library books and their hard-maintained order will be preserved.
“But what about this?” I countered, pulling out a memorandum I had heretofore kept everyone, myself included, ignorant of. “‘Rare ten dollar bill contains flaw in Alexander Hamilton’s portrait. Makes famous treasury secretary appear to be a demon creature from Titan.’” I read aloud.
“Aw, man,” Dave Higgins, a bearded scoundrel like his colleague, replied. “That’s not a flaw: that bill’s counterfeit.”
“Your reasoning is as poisonous as the air in this little room.” I dared him to answer that quite as readily.
“There’s nothing to worry about, man. Want a hit?” He offered me some of his marijuana and that slothful part of me accepted!

Crustbracket Intends No Harm

I may have been too busy eating to notice it, but, according to reports that later reached these mockery-inducing ears of mine, the television program that had been playing in the dining hall was a fictional account of the life of Rectanglo. (Just as Rectanglo’s adventures are semi-fictional extrapolations of my own.) My response to these reports, an observation that this was like an American version of a British program that is in turn remade as another British program, was greeted with good humor, but no real attention. I angrily sent them all away and hid under my desk, pretending it was a space capsule.
Crustbracket, the titular character of the program, was, like Rectanglo, an outsize personality whose adventures bordered on the surreal. He, too, lived in a world inside a box floating in space, but, unlike Rectanglo, was not the super-powered overlord of that world. Apparently, the producers felt that giving Crustbracket so much power made it too easy for him to achieve victory over the forces ranged against him each week. I may disagree, but I am contractually forbidden to make my views public.
In the episode that I missed while eating my collard greens and beets, Crustbracket is asked to infiltrate the temple of the corner god, Bifturek, as a favor for an old lady.
“I think my cat’s in there.” The old lady explained in a cracked and warbling voice. She and Crustbracket stood on the opposite side of the street from the less-than-forbidding (but all the more daunting for being so) temple, a simple, box-like structure crowned with a fiberglass statue of Bifturek.
“I’m not going to hurt anybody if I can help it,” Crustbracket announced, drawing gloves of yellow deer hide over his hands, “But I’ll get your cat out one way or another.”
“Don’t hurt my cat either, please.” The old lady begged.
“Don’t try to restrict my actions.” Crustbracket retorted as he stepped off the curb. Evidently this was intended as a snappy line, for this is where the program paused for a commercial.
“Hello, friends.” The actor who played Rectanglo smiled at the camera amid a scene of household disarray. “Do you have trouble balancing your aesthetic yearnings with the demands of your family?”

The Malgenefic Beams Dry Fast

It was at Porger’s birthday party that the question was first put to me.
“Do malgenfic beams dry fast?” Ms. Dalfrimp asked, forking a tiny nibble of the piece of birthday cake she held.
“Well,” I answered knowledgeably, “If by ‘fast’ you mean ‘quickly,’ then I would say yes, they do.”
“And if I meant some other use of the word ‘fast?’” Ms. Dalfrimp suggested, simpering and squinting with what, I’m sure, she felt was a charming and flirtatious echo of adolescence.
“Then, Ms. Dalfrimp,” I maintained my lordly mien (and isn’t that the best kind of mien?) as I prepared to make my departure from the woman’s presence, “I should, in any case, beg you to excuse me; I see that it is my turn on the bandstand.” Whatever sour looks the woman lobbed at my back were of no concern to me. I had a performance to give. Still, even as I strapped my horn around my neck, I couldn’t help wondering about the malgenefic beams and how fast they dried. Damn Ms. Dalfrimp! I had heard she would mess with one’s mind and now I knew it for sure!
My first notes betrayed my agitated state. We were supposed to be playing a tender ballad, one I’d played before called, “Mean Granny Lisa and the Two-Crowned Prong,” but my restless, aggressive solos were at odds with the song’s intended emotional burden.
“God, you suck.” A bearded youth commented as I stepped down from the riser.
“That was really funny.” A girl nearby added, whether in reference to my performance or the boy’s comment, I could not say.
“Just get out.” Porger demanded, revealing himself to be joking seconds late with a wide grin and a heartfelt wish that he would see me again next year.
“Malgenefic beams don’t ‘dry’ at all.” Dr. Körper explained to me on the ride home. His beard was bedizened with confetti and it was all I could do to pay attention to him. “That’s a misconception. Their initial application occurs in what is actually a gelatinous state.”
“Tell me, Doc,” I asked, looking out the window of the helicoid conveyance, “Why am I fascinated with scientists? Is it just the lab coats?”

Normal Working Conditions Imply Headache and Rain

Dr. Utray, in his capacity as scientific advisor to the Debutante of Debris, was not supposed to take inspiration from the early albums of Frank Zappa, neither the music they contained nor the aesthetic expressed by their covers. Yet he did. He tried to keep this fact a secret as he did the dual nature of his loyalties and the espionage work for Señor Gravitas that resulted thereof, but one could hardly fail to notice either the framed photo of Gravitas that hung on the wall over his desk or the bizarrely grouped accumulations of odds and ends that filled the rest of his office.
“What is that noise?” Ben Dubindurado asked, putting his head in the door of Utray’s office one day in the dead of winter.
Utray looked up from a memorandum he was in the middle of composing. Its intended primary recipient was the Debutante, though naturally a copy would be forwarded to Señor Gravitas. Its subject was the proper way to dress when the Debutante should meet with the Portmanteau of Pajamandible next week.
“I recorded a man reading a newspaper to a group of cigar rollers and overlaid it with the sounds of doughnuts falling off a conveyor belt and that of shoes being cobbled in the traditional manner by a man with no thumbs.” Dr. Utray explained. “I find it to be an intriguing combination.”
“And you like listening to it?” Ben was confused. “You’re sitting there listening to it on purpose?”
“Sure. I made a whole album of it.”
When he heard this Ben’s eyebrows relaxed. He smiled faintly. “Oh, I see.” He said, nodding.
“See what?” Utray asked.
Ben sighed.
“You ever see these comic strips done by people who actually can’t draw? So they take clip art and recurring images and make a comic strip out of it?” He asked.
“I think I know what you mean.” Utray answered hesitantly.
“Well… there you go.”
Utray frowned at his co-worker.
“Thank you for stopping by, Ben. I’ll see you at the surrender.”

Troubling Expressions of Horticulture

Big bison under the direction of the Slone Ramble Damble, a wheeled helicoid venture, positioned themselves, not adjacent to the coupon dispenser, as they had on previous forays into the arena, but against it.
“Risky strategy, isn’t it?” Copose, straw man to the Federation’s seemingly endless moralizing, sniffed to his labelmate, Francis Ajumjo.
“On the contrary, it is merely good manners.” The other fellow, who was well acquainted with both big bison and little lambs, drummed his fingers on his belly. He inclined his laurel-crowned head towards Copose. “Man’s inexorable craving for variety, don’t you know!” He held one hand aloft and rubbed its fingers together in a vague pantomime of the interaction of a multitude of forces.
“If you say so, Francis.” Copose decided to settle back and let things unfold as they would.
On the opposite side of the arena, in plain view of Copose, Ajumjo, and the hundreds of other prospective buyers, although attracting far less attention than the big bison now donning hats and taking up walking sticks, stood a dozen enormous cacti, each in its own mobile stone crock. These cacti, equipped with eyes of inverted osmium and gifted with powers of reflection and speech, were the nominal judges of all that passed for performance within the arena. Yet since their judgments would only be made known in the pages of the January issue of Willful Fishment, and would have little result other than the awarding of the annual Heimlich Knudsen Transpiration medal, they were, as I said, largely ignored.
One person who did not ignore them, however, was Abel Kardsharp, Gardener to the Stars. This nervous little man, dressed in a sweatshirt emblazoned with the image of a little lamb, fretted constantly with the moisturizing units attached to each cactus’ crock. I was there with him in the role of friend and confidant, however dubious and dismissive I may have sounded.
“Why do they even need these units, Abel?” I asked. “I thought cacti could do without water for long periods of time.”
Abel only shook his head and cowered in the shadows of his charges, prompting me to abandon him for the concession stand. I doubted he could introduce me to David Letterman anyway.

Faceless Fate Rent By the Pentagram

As powerful a symbol as the pentagram supposedly is, it is nothing compared to the bactrium of Procurement. The latter, an elongated oval divided into three segments by two lines that extend beyond the oval’s parameters and crowned with a heavy dot in the upper segment, has been known to provoke stern letters to the editor in the local public organ when seen branded into the hides of dairy cattle. As for the pentagram, outside of frightening congressmen into drafting repressive legislation that will never be enforced, much less passed, what has it ever really accomplished? Still, I suppose we must discuss it, as it is in the title of this piece for all the world to see.
“Before we get started,” I said to Broomwillow, “Wouldn’t you rather discuss the bactrium than the pentagram?”
“The bactrium? What’s that?” He asked. What a joker Broomwillow can be! You wouldn’t know it to look at him, all sober and severe in his brown sack suit.
“The symbol for Procurement.” I reminded him indulgently.
“Procurement?” The look on his face was disconcerting.
“Loath Procurement?” I gave the philosophy its full name, hoping he hadn’t forgotten so soon.
“Loath… oh, your belief system. Yes, yes. I remember now.”
“Good.” I smiled. “Now, wouldn’t you rather discuss the bactrium than the pentagram?” I repeated, enunciating the words with care.
“Oh, sure. But, as you pointed out, we’re here to discuss the pentagram.” Broomwillow nodded soberly and spread his arms out in resignation.
“Are you resigning yourself to fate?” I jumped at the chance to kill two birds (one stone).
Broomwillow’s look of confusion returned.
“Never mind.” I said. “Now, the pentagram. Would you agree that, being drawn in the Middle Ages, it should be considered public domain?”
“You mean the actual Sigil of Baphomet with the goat’s head and Hebrew letters?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Good.” I sighed. “I’m glad we agree.”

We Sounded the Bellmaker’s Devotion to Aardvark

I decided to stick with Broomwillow for a while. We drew variants of the bactrium (a rectangle instead of an oval; otherwise the same) on each other’s foreheads and began beating on makeshift drums as we marched up the street.
“You there!” An old man in the floppy, pointed cap of a cobbler bellowed at us. “You that bear the mark of Procurement! What are you doing making all that racket?”
“We are sounding the bellmaker’s devotion to Aardvark, cobbler.” I answered politely, but loudly, so that all might hear.
“Old Grufwede?” The cobbler replied, standing up from his makeshift chair and peering down the street at the bellmaker’s sign. “Devoted to Aardvark? Are you sure?”
“These are not mendacious fellows, Mr. Shoemaker.” A pedestrian in robes of sumptuous ermine declared. “I do not think they try to deceive us.”
“I make no reference to deceit, Vendor Stephens.” The old cobbler snapped. “I merely say that these two, being but young men,” Here he gestured to Broomwillow and me with an iron implement used for pulling the tongues from shoes, “Are likely to be mistaken about such an imputation.”
“Young men!” I repeated with derision. “I don’t know about Broomwillow here, but I am hardly a young man.”
“I’m thirty-one.” Broomwillow added, unnecessarily, as we will see, for he disappears from our story right now.
I turned to ask, rhetorically, of course, whether Broomwillow considered me to be young, but he had already disappeared, so I merely turned about on the sidewalk, silently imploring passersby to judge for themselves whether mine was the face of a young man. In vain did the cobbler and subsequently the vendor try to explain that, relatively speaking, I was a young man. I was young in comparison to them, in other words. But I would have none of it. I was a budding feeb and I could prove it! I turned back the way I had come, back towards the bellmaker’s.
“Bellmaker Grufwede!” I bellowed, throwing open his door with a crash.
“What the hell are you doing?” The bellmaker demanded, looking up from a wax model of his latest design. “You’re old enough to know better than that!”

Quite A Dapper Little Fellow

Mr. Throbdobble, quite a dapper little fellow indeed, entered Mr. Grosvenor’s haberdashery fresh from the barbershop. His recently shaved face smelled of Feuilleton’s #6 and his hair, neatly cut and slicked down, smelled of Stimson’s Finishing Oil. The combination of these two scents, together with the reek of money that emanated from every detail of Mr. Throbdobble’s attire, acted upon Mr. Grosvenor’s system in much the same way catnip does on most cats. I had a cat once that made no sign whatsoever of recognition when exposed to catnip so, according to my reasoning, there must be haberdashers out there that are indifferent to the sight of a wealthy man with an appreciation for the traditional viewpoint in men’s clothing, but Mr. Grosvenor was not one of these.
“Good morning.” Mr. Grosvenor greeted Mr. Throbdobble.
“Good morning. My name is Throbdobble, Cyrus Throbdobble.” Returned the customer.
“Pleased to meet you, sir. I’m Julius Grosvenor.” The two men shook hands, the shop owner in black, the customer in gray.
“And this is your establishment?” Throbdobble asked, gesturing about at the old fashioned sales floor with the stamped tin ceiling.
“Yes it is.”
“Very good. I was hoping I could speak to the owner and not just a salesmen.” Mr. Throbdobble’s moustache wriggled expressively. “I have just arrived in this city after many months at sea. I am taking up residence here and I will require a full complement of items to make my stay as comfortable and elegant as possible.”
These words were to Mr. Grosvenor as delightful as the sound of Mick Jagger’s voice on the telephone would be to a person wishing that famous singer to buy a number of paintings from him. Of course, I’ve been hard at work producing paintings that might appeal to any number of celebrities, all without compromising my personal vision, but the longed-for telephone call does not come. Sometimes at night at my studio as I play the guitar in between layers of paint, I have the fantasy that Eddie Van Halen, whose car has broken down on the road outside, will come into my yard looking for assistance and hear my playing. Intrigued, he will knock on my studio door. I’ll invite him in and he’ll discover that I’m not just a great guitar player, but a painter of irresistible canvases.

As Amusing as the Prosthetic Device Upon Which He Leant

Only the munchmonster could find something humorous about the sight of the artificial limbs attached to Gruffin’s torso. The song accompanying the scene promised ultimate vengeance on those who belittle human dignity, but I didn’t believe James Taylor could fulfill that promise, not against the munchmonster, anyway. I had settled myself against laughing before I entered the chamber, knowing that my reactions would be monitored. No effort on my part was necessary, however; the show wasn’t funny.
“He’s not laughing.” One of the researchers commented.
“What is he doing?” The blonde automaton asked.
“He appears to be making a sour look.”
The blonde consulted his chart.
“I don’t have a box to check with that appellation.”
“Aw, hell, just check religious objection.” Another researcher, one busying himself inflating several children with helium, growled from across the room. “Nobody reads these reports anyway.”
“I resent that! Programming wouldn’t know what to put on the air without thorough documentation of feedback from the target demographic.”
“I think there’s been some mistake.” I said, entering the data collection room. “I’m not in the target demographic.”
“How’d you get through that door?” Blondie demanded. “That’s nineteen weight duodonium!”
“You’re between the ages of twenty-five and forty, aren’t you?” The first researcher asked. “White, little to no college, raised by fundamentalist ignoramuses?”
“Yes, but this program just isn’t the kind of thing that I would watch. If I had a TV, which I don’t.” I explained.
The researchers stared at the automaton awestruck. One of the children floated up to the ceiling.
“He doesn’t have a TV?” One said in horror.
“Amputate his legs.” The blonde ordered. “Make him feel identification with the character.” As they readied me for the surgery, one of them asked me, cynically, what kind of program would be the kind I liked to watch.
“I don’t know.” I mused. “A quiet, slow-paced cartoon maybe?”

Mother’s Intolerant Recipe

Upon my return from the Arrant Creek Red Beans and Collard Greens Festival, “Captain Blowhard” spray-painted across my forehead, I reunited with my imaginary friend Jerry Lancaster and our puppet Dr. Fungroid. I was immediately all business.
“What’s this about ‘Mother’s Intolerant Recipe?’” I asked.
“I haven’t the slightest idea.” Jerry replied. “Opened the paper this morning and there it was, plastered across the front page big enough to be an announcement of intelligent life on another planet, but no story underneath, just the usual crap about life being uniquely created on this planet by the Christian god.”
“Sheep.” Dr. Fungroid muttered angrily.
“Alright, that’s enough about that.” I squelched any burgeoning bitch session. “I’m here to take control of the situation.”
“I wish you would. It’s getting out of hand. Here.” Jerry handed me an alcohol prep pad to cleanse my forehead of my souvenir.
“You think this is bad,” I remarked, looking at the smears of red and black on the pad, “You should have seen Nicole Kidman’s forehead. They painted a reproduction of L. Ron Hubbard’s Apotheosis on it.”
“The one by Lucian Freud?” Dr. Fungroid asked.
“No. Neu Rolle.”
“Please!” Jerry shuddered. “Don’t mention that woman and her horrifying forehead to me! It gives me the willies!”
“You suffer from nicolakidmanidomophobia?” Dr. Fungroid asked. His interest went beyond the clinical; he was, in addition to being a devoted research scientist, an enthusiastic cineaste. He once told me he had seen Collegiate Pranksters Waste Valuable Time at least thirty times.
“I think your Latin is a little off.” I mused.
“If you can claim to suffer from dessinophrenia, then I think I can diagnose our friend Jerry here in the aforementioned manner.” Dr. Fungroid gestured towards the imaginary fellow with his little puppet hands.
I nodded, admitting the truth of the statement. Wearily, I sought the sofa under the window through which one could look out on Tunnelulu, capital city of the Tunnel System. Only recently constructed during my absence, I had not yet had time to inspect it. Nor did I now.

Turgley Reviews Four New Gelatin Molds

Stoneclaw Turgley reviewed the four new gelatin molds not because he had to, but because he wanted to. He was that kind of writer. Financial remuneration for his efforts had never been a significant factor to him. This wasn’t just because of the fact that Turgley would write whether he was paid or not, it was also because he rarely was paid for anything he wrote.
Don’t blame the shallowness of the marketplace, however, for he rarely submitted anything for publication anyway.
As he labored over the review he smiled at the thought of sending the piece in to some serious literary magazine like Sargasso Review, Umlauts, or The Eleomosynary. Even as he wrote of the earnest tactile qualities of the horse’s-hoof-shaped mold, he fantasized about having his work interpreted as allegorical. But an allegory for what, he wondered, looking up from the cheap spiral bound notebook in which he wrote.
There were four gelatin molds. There were also four… what? Races of man? Major candy manufacturers? Legs on a chair? Turgley scratched his chin. It could be something more personal, more subjective. For instance, he had had sexual intercourse with four women so far in his life. Each gelatin mold could stand for one of them. Actually, he had had sexual encounters with more than four women, but he had placed his penis inside the vaginas of only four.
That was a depressing thought and it distracted him from his work.
Turgley hammered out the rest of the review in a dry, consumer’s guide style at odds with the poetic, borderline surrealist nature of its beginning. No submitting this one to a real magazine. It would just have to be one of those pieces that was discovered after his death and appreciated within the context of the sum total of his work. He ended with a non sequitur that expressed his feelings at that moment and, he hoped, would have a random connection with the rest of the piece, one that would make some future reviewer of his work say, “Aha, what a clever man he was!”
Answering the knock on his door later in the day, he was surprised to find a package thrust into his hands by a uniformed deliveryman.
“But I didn’t order any socks!” He puzzled as he opened the package in the privacy of his book-lined chamber.

This Friday Sees the Launch of the Dentist’s Barge

My friends and I had taken a suite overlooking the harbor. From the balcony we could see the dentist’s barge in its berth.
“Construction is almost complete.” Dr. Fungroid considered.
“It wouldn’t be too difficult to drop some kind of incendiary device from here.” Jerry suggested. He studied my profile as he spoke. What notions did my world-encompassing skull contain?
“The sea gives me the creeps.” I said. “The word ‘marina’ alone is worth one sleepless night.”
“You don’t sleep at night.” Jerry reminded me.
I nodded. “I’ve become nocturnal.”
“Gentlemen,” Dr. Fungroid interjected. “The barge will be launched on Friday. We need to come to a decision.”
I glanced at the calendar. Beneath the picture of Eric Dolphy as a bear lay the month of December all stretched out like a maze of hospital corridors.
“That gives us two days.” I said. “Plenty of time to tailor our plans to the situation. I say,” I looked my two friends in the eyes. “We enjoy ourselves.”
Jerry picked up the phone. “Shall I order pizza?” He asked.
“No.” Dr. Fungroid answered, his stiff, wooden hand coming down on the plungers. “We’ll eat later. Right now we need to spy on the dentist.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Taking charge, are we? Well, OK. I’m not in a hurry to eat cheese anyway.”
The three of us put on disguises and ambled down to the small contractor’s shack from which the dentist was overseeing the final phase of his barge’s construction. I, dressed as a typical box of children’s cereal, knocked on the door.
“Yes?” A shapely young woman in a bamboo-print cat suit answered.
“Are you interested in my prize?” I asked, pointing at the front of my packaging.
“What is it?” She asked as she looked me over. “A race car powered by baking soda? Well, I don’t know.”
“Go on.” Urged Jerry, indistinguishable from a large snail. “You don’t have to eat the cereal first. Just dig your hands down to the bottom.”
“No! No!” Dr. Fungroid objected. He was a Frenchman. “That violates an implied social contract!”

Scope Exceeds Scale

Though far ranging, the Tunnel System is relatively small. In fact, it has been estimated that its entirety, excluding restrooms and infrastructural support chambers of course, could be crammed into a space no larger than my grandmother’s old bedroom. Naturally, I don’t believe this, but, seeing as how I read it in a book from a legitimate publisher, I am compelled to accept its veracity. So much for the testimony of my own perception.
Still, the demands of my position require than I make periodic inspection tours of the tunnels, whether my subsequent reports of these tours are accepted as truth or not.
“But what is truth anyway?” I mumbled as Jerry, Dr. Fungroid, and I made our way along a purple hallway.
“Let’s not get into that, please.” The puppet begged. “Truth is a word that has outlived its usefulness, like ‘love,’ ‘life,’ and ‘money.’”
I laughed at the profundity of Fungroid’s remark.
“Shh!” Jerry cautioned. “I think I hear something.”
“That’s only to be expected.” I replied. “There are bound to be people behind these doors.” I waved at the purple doors that lined the hallway.
“Yes, but this was a scary sound.” Jerry pointed to a particular door.
“Really? Like what?”
“Like whale speech.” Jerry made a strangled noise in his throat. In response, a noise came from behind the door. It didn’t sound like whale speech to me, more like a bass fiddle bowed slowly with a sticky bow.
“Interesting.” I said. “We’ll check it out.” I reached for the knob. Jerry cuddled Dr. Fungroid close. Turning the knob slowly, just to be dramatic, I suddenly jerked the door open.
An ocean of water, fresh and warm, poured into the hall, filling it in seconds and carrying me far away. When morning came, I found myself alive, but soggy, amid a mountain of soap bubbles. The tiles on the walls were sweaty and the radio, perched on the back of the toilet, was proclaiming it another gorgeous day to be alive.
“But not soggy.” The DJ added as he put on some song by Blondie that I had felt ambivalence towards as a child.

I Will Know the Memory By Its Stickiness

I remember, with much the same revulsion now as I felt then, my grandfather opening his mouth and the strings of saliva that hung between his jaws like something out of a horror comic book. I’m eating as I write this and getting a little sick, so I think we’ll skip ahead to some other topic. It’s bad enough that the Chapstick on my lips got mixed up with my own mouth juices and, at my first bite of beans, smeared off onto my spoon in a disgusting trail of snotty goop. OK, on to some other topic.
At the end of Barry’s term of office vengeful flocks of green birds wearing yellow helmets of a new polymer developed through an initiative sponsored by Barry streamed through the forests to the north spraying the tree dwellers with their accumulated feces.
“It burns! It burns!” Little Nikimo screamed, wiping desperately at her eyes.
“I notice that the child’s name ends in an ‘o.’” A reporter with the Digby Dugout said to Lord Treibum, chief of these tree dwelling frauds. “Yet she is a girl. Isn’t that unusual?”
“You reporters!” Laughed Lord Treibum. “Always probing for any little piece of information that might shed a bad light on your subject. You sicken me.” The old chief sat down on the sofa and acknowledged the entrance of one of his lieutenants.
“What news, Rabgur?” He asked.
“The birds are showing remarkable resistance to our feeb-o-ray weapons. It must be their helmets.” Rabgur, at one time apprenticed to Shagbo the rug puller, reported.
“Maybe so.” Lord Treibum turned to the reporter. “There’s something worthwhile for you to look into.” He said.
“Undoubtedly.” The reporter agreed, the cynicism of his profession evident in his voice and, later, the story he wrote about the attack of the birds.
“I can’t print this.” His editor complained, tossing the story down on the toilet seat. “It makes it look like Barry had something to do with it.”
“The connection is plain as day, chief!” The reporter insisted.
“Not to that little boy who was blinded.” The cranky old editor growled before pushing the reporter out of the restroom.

Blood Under Her Nails

“How’s the investigation coming along?” Winston Travesty asked as he sidled up to Laurence Poolp, the latter bent over a microscope, a banana sandwich in his hand.
“You know,” Poolp replied, pinching the bridge of his nose and holding the sandwich before Travesty’s eyes. “This is almost exactly the way my mom used to make these things.”
“I’m glad you approve.” Travesty, a nineteen-year veteran with the Grumpville Law Enforcement Ministry, did not sound glad. He sounded fatally constipated, but that was how he always sounded, so of course Poolp didn’t feel compelled to include that observation in his diary.
“Now,” Travesty continued, “Have you been able to match the blood under the victim’s nails with that of Mr. Eggplant, this supposed cosmonaut?”
Poolp sighed. “No. And before you go getting all huffy,” He added, “Let me explain.”
“Please do.” Travesty folded his arms so that his identification badge was pressed into a tilted position like a coffin about to be dumped into the sea.
“This blood, so-called, under her nails? It’s nothing but common rust gravy.” Poolp gestured towards the microscope. One of his banana slices fell out. He quickly shoved the rest of the sandwich into his mouth.
“What?” Travesty demanded, the sides of his mouth rising up like the hands of a fisherman illustrating an unusually large catch. “Julia Wells clawed her murderer as she was attacked—she got his blood under her nails. That’s the only solid piece of evidence we have to tie this Eggplant guy to her. And you tell me it’s… gravy?”
“It is. Taste tests confirm it.” Poolp was adamant, although the firmness of his words was somewhat negated by the wad of bread, mayonnaise, and banana around which he spoke.
Travesty considered.
“I’ve got it.” He pounced. “The Eggplant has gravy for blood.”
“It would seem so.” Poolp concurred. “But there’s more: it seems he actually was in space at the time of the murder. Taste tests confirm it.”
“The clever bastard!” Travesty declared.

The Listing of the Pecando’s Attributes

The early to mid-seventies were a time of documentary films. Most of these documentaries featured the Jazz Fusion of Miles Davis or other composer/performers utilizing electrified trumpet and sitar. Their subject matter ranged from the paralysis of the traditional Jewish family confronted with the challenge of Mars to the production of chocolate-covered ants. Of course, the latter types of film usually featured incongruous Ragtime snippets intercut with the Fusion to liven up segments where the ants scramble desperately to avoid the molten chocolate.
One such documentary, The Listing of the Pecando’s Attributes, is of particular interest to the aficionado of this era of documentary filmmaking. Although not released until 1978, and hence more properly ranked in the so-called “silver age” of documentaries, this film, like its companion film, Fireworks at the Funeral, was made by Helmut Krisplith, arguably the quintessential early to mid-seventies documentary filmmaker. As The Listing of the Pecando’s Attributes was Krisplith’s last film (he died of a heroin overdose only weeks following the final editing of the film), it is only natural that we should group it with the main body of his work.
There are those, however, who would have it otherwise.
“The film came out after 1976,” argues Nelshaftez Bherzami, the director of Haiku studies at the University of Sacklunch. “And therefore clearly cannot be classified with the rest of the documentaries that you so strangely find compelling.” I quote him from a brief, but heated, argument we had on the subject in the hallway outside the Insurance Commissioner’s office.
“What’s the film about?” Wondered a bystander, a stocky man in the traditional attire of an ice cream vendor.
“It purports to show King Amelcrabbo reading out a list of the Pecando’s attributes.” Bherzami answered before I could.
“Purports?” I repeated. “Explain yourself, sir!”
“That’s not King Amelcrabbo’s voice!” Bherzami insisted. “Krisplith had an actor dub it in.”
“That’s a lie!” I screamed.
“What’s the Pecando?” Our bystander wanted to know.

The Pants Are Ascribed to Quillomonker

Although Martha Whitehouse doubted the ascription Dongella had made, she said nothing, preferring to recall the half-dozen instances in which Dongella had been publicly proven wrong.
“There.” She thought. “I have successfully established my mental framework. Hopefully it will endure for the remainder of the conference.”
Across the table from Martha, Dongella, swathed in bandages, nodded her head slightly in either acknowledgement or approval as Mrs. Gapunction read out Dongella’s judgment to the ladies seated around the table. As she listened, Dongella’s thoughts were only partly on the matter of the pants, for which the ladies had gathered. With the rest of her powers of concentration (which were considerable, despite the two-year degree from The University of Sacklunch, which was the sum total of her higher education) she entertained a fantasy in which the sun, in the form of a man in an orange business suit, was punished for the nasty burn she had received two weeks before at Staapgo.
“I am a lunar queen.” She thought finally, as talk moved on to the hallmarks of the Quillomonker style.
“Until the early eighties, of course, when one said ‘Quillomonker,’ one immediately thought of elongated pleats,” Debra Goosefarthing told them, gesturing elaborately with her hands as usual, much to the annoyance of Martha, “But today, with his emphasis on heavy, inflexible corduroy, I think most people would just as soon forget all that they ever thought they knew about Quillomonker.”
Martha dug a thumbnail into the dishwater-softened (or coarsened, according to one’s perspective) underside of her wrist to help herself maintain that mental framework she so longed to be able to summon up whenever she needed it, which, now that Herbert was gone, seemed to be whenever she was in the presence of her fellow ladies.
After the conference had broken up for the day and the room was slowly (lethally slowly, Martha thought) being emptied, little Marie Opperkins approached Martha.
“What did you think of Jana’s wig?” Marie asked.
“I never think about such things.” Martha lied.

An Exceptional Person is Our Lordly Bird

Some, the Rankoold brothers among them, felt that he was a pelican. Others, and I fell into this latter group, were convinced that he was of an artificial bird species, such as the flunker or the pensnatcher. It is a testimony to the weight with which he lay (some might say nested!) on our minds that the debates between these two groups, and among the minority opinion-holders such as those that felt he was a dog or only the embodiment of a mystic birdishness, were conducted at times when we should all have been working towards the establishment of our own groups of followers. Whether we adopted the guise of a bird or not in order to attain this goal was yet another refinement of the debate and only went to further the lengths to which we would go to waste more time.
As I say, the Rankoold brothers were in the opposition to me and those of a similar mindset. Despite this, I cannot find fault with their devotion to the lordly bird, but I could badmouth them to the bird himself. To do so, I needed to travel to Hoshino, the island where our hero lived. Such was my hatred for Frank and Ronald that I was even willing to fly to get there. Perhaps I soothed my fears and justified my breach of principles by telling myself that I was emulating a bird by doing so; I don’t remember now. All I can recall at this point is the excitement I felt at being the first among us to see the bird in person. Until now, we had only seen him in magazines and music videos. Bob Scrodal claimed to have spoken with the bird at a convention, but he had no proof that this ever took place.
My first shock on being met at the island’s tiny airport by Mr. Slather, who managed the island for the bird, was that he did not seem at all the kind of person that the bird would choose to associate with. His bones were not hollow. He carried a blind man’s cane.
“Although pelican-like in appearance,” Slather remarked as we were driven to the Mountain of Dignity, “He is not a pelican, I can tell you that much.”
I rubbed my hands together in victory.
“Your gestures are wasted on me.” Slather remonstrated without bitterness.
There were delays, of course, but I bore them all easily enough, having brought along a book about someone totally different from the bird.

Hesitation on the Open Range

The only weapon I usually carry, if I carry one at all, and if you don’t count my hat, is a paralyzer cone. It shouldn’t shock or inordinately thrill any of you to learn that I brought the paralyzer cone with me on my trip to the country. There are many wild animals there, hiding in the tall grass.
“Shoot! Shoot!” Beaterswung cried as the mouse hippo charged from a canebrake. Alternately, Tomacose, the third member of our party, bellowed, “Fire! Fire!” Of course, the proper injunction is “Paralyze! Paralyze!” but I doubt if either man could ever become accustomed to uttering it, especially in such a dramatic situation as we found ourselves in. As it was, I did nothing, but allowed the beast to pass us by.
“By god, Toadsgoboad,” Beaterswung declared, removing his pit helmet, “That was a close one.”
“Why didn’t you fire?” Tomacose demanded as he pulled a flask of liquor from his trousers. “That thing could have killed all of us.” He included our team of native guides in the circling gesture he made with the flask, something I didn’t think his patrician blood would allow him. I didn’t bother to correct his use of the term ‘fire,’ but shook my head as I watched the dust swirl up to Father Sun in the wake of the mouse hippo.
“He probably knew the beast wasn’t in rut fever.” Beaterswung suggested. He accepted Tomacose’s offer of the flask. “How did you know, Toadsgoboad?”
“I didn’t.” I replied. I waved away the flask and continued to scan the ground for yarn.
Later that night in our camp under the ominous height of Alpha Rock, Tomacose started in again.
“You’ve got to be ready to fire when something like that happens. The slightest hesitation and you could be dead.”
“You’re right.” I agreed. I removed the paralyzer cone from the pocket of my coat hanging over the back of a chair. I aimed it at Tomacose and triggered the firing mechanism. “‘Fire’ is the better word.”
“What have you done?” Beaterswung gasped.
“Sorry, Beaterswung,” I said, “But you see, I knew that mouse hippo. He taught me how to knit.”

The Purpose Little Served By the Seemingly Old

The new cultural center resembled a zebra’s hoof crashing down on a lady’s handbag. It had been hoped that the building would rejuvenate interest in Slumpwort’s downtown sector, but so far such hopes remained unrealized. The architect, Ned Deshaibo, was persuaded to visit the building a year after it had opened to give a lecture on the evolution of its design. Civic leaders gave out that this was being done to answer the controversy over the center’s design. In actuality, there was no controversy. Of course, some people thought it looked stupid and had said so publicly, but, for the most part, no one cared one way or another.
“Perhaps if they schedule some decent acts to perform at the center,” Bucket McClain suggested to a friend, “Or invited some kind of exhibition or something. Something people might actually want to see.”
“Well, they’re hoping that people will come see Ned Deshaibo speak.” McClain’s friend, the actor Raymond Durable, reminded McClain.
“A vain hope. This is one last chance to raise awareness for the center. Stir up some fake controversy and see what happens.”
“You’ve heard how much they’re paying Deshaibo to speak?”
“No, how much?”
“$175,000.”
“How much?” McClain goggled, mouth ajar. Now his sense of outrage was truly engaged. He marched down to the mayor’s office, Durable in tow, and demanded to see the mayor.
“I’m sorry, Mr. McClain,” the young woman on duty was firm, “No one gets to see the mayor today.”
“But I’m a citizen!” McClain insisted.
“Hey, Bucket,” Durable called. He was looking at a framed poster of upcoming cultural events. “Look at this.”
“‘Visions of Intolerable Wealth.’” McClain read aloud. “What’s that?”
“It’s a play.” Durable explained. “A controversial one, too.” He glanced at the mayor’s receptionist. “What game are they playing here?” He wondered aloud.
Bucket McClain did not speculate. He was mentally preparing a jacket whose pockets would be full of tomatoes.

His Name is Echoed in the Stamped Tin of the Previous Century

Unlike my earlier efforts at the creation of a marketable hero figure, Malcolm Jamaica made it out of committee to emerge as the sensation of the Christmastime Series Fiction Showcase. Everyone, including my traditional enemies, wanted to tell me how much they loved the whole Malcolm Jamaica premise. Of course, my assistants kept most of these people from bothering me, but I could see the hand-painted banners and hear the shouts of approbation. Sol Menschen, a toy manufacturer from the Vinyl Belt, commented that he had never seen such a display of affection for a character that hadn’t even officially appeared in any of the available media yet.
“Who says he will?” I joked, and, naturally, was taken seriously by six of the dozen people gathered around. Shocked expressions vied with the knowing visages of those who had had more experience with my flippant manner.
In truth, however, I had already sent Malcolm Jamaica on his first adventure. Titled Scuppernongs From Indubia Sixteen, it was a novel dealing, ostensibly, with Jamaica’s efforts to reconcile a young heiress with the primitive robot that had served as her caretaker during her time inside the Egg of the Dance. Of course, there was more to it than that, with many seemingly purposeless diversions and autobiographical commentary as was typical of all my work to that point. I was holding this novel in abeyance until the critical moment, having only issued a one-page outline of the character thus far, a page taken up for the most part by a crude depiction of Malcolm Jamaica in ballpoint pen.
“As you can see,” I explained to Jamaica in a quiet interlude between lectures to the Showcase attendees, “The remainder of the ‘outline’ is merely random thoughts— fragments of conversation and the like.”
“Then why are they all so taken with me?” Jamaica tried to puzzle it out, leaning over the doughnuts on the table of refreshments.
“You should know that better than anyone else.” I reminded him. “After all, it says right here:” I pointed to a copy of the outline, “Heightened self-awareness.”
“Maybe,” Jamaica theorized, his noble head rising to stare into his vague reflection in the oak paneling, “It’s word-of-mouth. Maybe they’ve heard about my Adventure of the Jellied Cardboard.”
“I don’t see how they could have,” I said, “Seeing as how I haven’t.”

One Hundred Coated Tablets

Ever suspicious, I poured out the baby aspirins on the bedspread and counted them. As promised on the label, there were indeed one hundred coated tablets, but I still harbored doubts (and aren’t doubts usually harbored? I mean, you don’t shelter them or put them in the bank) about the pharmacist who had sold them to me. I examined the expiration date, but found nothing amiss… unless it was actually two years in the future. The calendar, one bearing pictures of chimpanzees in human clothing, posed in obvious stage sets, told me the year, but what if I had forgotten (or, in a spasm of nostalgia, simply refused) to change it. Had my birthday been on… I consulted the proper month… Tuesday last year as well? Of course I couldn’t remember. Who, outside some sort of Marilu Henner freak would?
I could remember the pharmacist’s face. He looked astonishingly like Buck Owens. Of course, one could trust Buck Owens, but a pharmacist who looked like him, dressed in a polyester smock, working in a shoddy little store that used to sell comic books when I was a child, but no longer? I didn’t think so. I thought about the real Buck Owens and his red-white-and-blue guitar, declaring his devotion to grinnin’. The pharmacist had not grinned once, not even when I pointed out that the five-dollar bill I was handing him was an old one.
“It might have come out of D.B. Cooper’s haul.” I joked, uncharacteristically for me, but then I had to do something to allay my nerves.
“What do you need the aspirin for?” Mr. Not Owens asked.
“Why do you want to know?” I wondered.
“If you’re suffering from migraines,” He fixed me with a stare like a policeman just before he looks away in disregard for your answer, “There are much more powerful analgesics available over-the-counter now.”
“I’m not suffering from migraines.” I answered, arrogance and outrage intermingled on my features as one can almost make out on the footage from the surveillance camera.
“If you say so.”
“How’s Roy Clark these days?” I eyed him closely, triumphant in my stance. My only regret is that I did not count my change, but dropped it into my pocket to join my guitar pick, Chapstick, and keys.

Hank Takes a Breather

Before continuing with the second half of his public reading of my book, Nibble Nibble Mousekin, Hank announced a brief intermission and repaired to the rooftop where he could enjoy a refreshing drink and the sight of the sleepy city all around. I joined him there and asked him how he thought the reading was going. Did the audience seem responsive?
“It is always hard to judge these things.” Hank replied. He sat on a rough, handmade stool, his back to the low wall that surrounded the rooftop and kept the children’s pet pig from falling to its death among the rug merchants below.
“I noticed damn few laughs.” I commented. “Not that I’m faulting your reading, which is exemplary. I always enjoy hearing my stuff read aloud.” I might have added, “especially by a stranger,” but I didn’t want to rattle the man any more than necessary. After all, he owned the broadcasting equipment.
“No, it could be the way I’m reading it.” Admitted Hank. “I see the work as more autobiography than anything else. And, as your life is essentially tragic, I wanted to strike a more somber tone.”
“You see my life as essentially tragic?” I wondered.
“Sure. Sorry if that hits you the wrong way, but I thought, from what I’ve read, that you felt that way yourself. Of course, everyone does. Even I. It’s just… you know, your doomed existence as a nobody, your delusions about yourself, the inability to shed those extra twenty pounds…”
“OK!” I interrupted. “I get the picture.”
Hank glanced at the door that led downstairs where one of the grad student flunkies stood tapping her watch.
“Time to head back.” He said. Rising from the stool, he asked, “You coming?”
“In a minute. I want to digest all this.” Nobody could say I wasn’t bold.
“Save your self-pity for your work. It’s funnier that way.” With those bracing words he strode away.
I sat listening to the cries of the merchants below, astonished suddenly to hear the sound of laughter intermingling with the declamations of value. Charging down the stairs, my one thought was, “That bastard!”








Part Two: Throb Knock Neons

Corrects Anything When Applied Externally

Malcolm Jamaica had recently begun wearing athletic shoes (or “tennis shoes,” as he called them) after an interval of fifteen years during which he wore loafers.
“I can already tell this is going to be a difficult year.” He said to his roommate Don Durkee as he tied his shoes.
“It only gets harder from here on out.” Don replied. He sat in a chair opposite the sofa on which Jamaica sat.
The latter man, the hero of this extended narrative, looked up at his friend. The tying had been completed. He was ready to head out into the world.
“Really?” He asked, sincerely interested in the answer.
“Yep.” Don assured him. He turned the page of the magazine he was reading. “I first noticed it when I turned thirty-nine, but you’re already experiencing it.”
“I feel like crying.” Jamaica admitted. He slumped back against the sofa. The outside world, usually such a tempting destination, suddenly seemed an obscene, multi-legged, sky-darkening monster, intent on separating families, smashing pottery, and laying a cold wire of fear across his brain.
“I know.” Don dropped his magazine (Contemplative Techno Analysis) into the basket by his chair and looked at Malcolm Jamaica. “However,” he said with a sigh, “You really have no choice but to continue as you have done up until now.”
“Yeah.” Jamaica returned, putting his hands on his knees and sitting up straight. He clenched his anal sphincter as he had been trained to do when confronted with painful mental images. He nodded, smiled at Don, and stood up.
“How do they feel?” Don asked, glancing at the shoes.
“Like moon boots.”
Outside the two men’s hundred-year-old townhouse the sky was dark, a monstrous figure subjectively discernible in the clouds. The wind had blown wet, dead leaves over the steps. Malcolm Jamaica could smell burning plastic.


Malcolm Jamaica in Rome

The first stop on Jamaica’s adventure was Rome. Not the Italian Rome of your historical legacy, but an Eastern construction no older than the first Joy Division album. Jamaica meditated upon the decline of albums as the definitive expression of a musician’s vision as the helisphere in which he rode slowly descended to the rooftop of the Troglydata Hotel.
“I’m certainly not going to start downloading singles.” He promised himself. He stepped out of the helisphere and was greeted by one of the members of the hotel’s staff.
“Mr. Jamaica?”
“Yes?” Jamaica glanced back to see his suitcase being unloaded from the cargo hold.
“Welcome to the Troglydata. My name is Winston O’Keefe. I hope your stay with us will be a pleasant and memorable one.”
“Thank you.”
“Before I conduct you to your suite, Mr. Jamaica, I was asked to give you this on your arrival.” O’Keefe handed Jamaica a paper-wrapped parcel, four inches wide, seven inches long, and one inch thick.”
“Thank you.” Jamaica examined the parcel. The sign of the Meshadal Cartel, a sedate sigil stamped in red ink, was the only identifying mark on it. He stuffed the parcel into a large pocket inside his coat and nodded to O’Keefe. The latter nodded in turn to a uniformed man who looked too old to be earning his living carrying bags, yet that is exactly what he did, carrying Jamaica’s suitcase as he followed behind Jamaica, himself following O’Keefe into the hotel.
The suite was on the next-to-highest floor.
“The top floor is the residence of Prince Hopshi?” Jamaica asked in the elevator.
“One of his residences.” O’Keefe corrected. He seemed proud to work in an establishment that now harbored two of the most dangerous men on the subcontinent. He smiled placidly as Jamaica made a brief notation on the index card he habitually kept in his breast pocket.
“Contact the Claktion.” Jamaica wrote.

Haley Endures Another Round

The Troglydata Hotel, being the kind of establishment it was, didn’t have just one bar, but four. As she waited to make contact with Malcolm Jamaica, Haley Pantomimic sat in the Denmark, the second best bar in the hotel. With her was her brother, Gilbert.
“I wish this guy would hurry up.” Haley complained.
“What’s the problem?” Gilbert asked, a crooked expression of bliss on his face. “Free booze.” He remarked, taking another sip of his Jack and Coke.
“Free for you.” Haley corrected. “Not free to the Union.” Her own drink, a glass of red wine, sat before her like a plain girl at a party.
“The Union.” Gilbert sneered.
“Keep your voice down.” Haley commanded, eyes flashing.
“What have they ever really contributed to this sovereign state of ours?”
“It’s paying for your ‘free booze,’ so shut up.” Haley looked at her watch again.
Gilbert hefted his glass appreciatively. “True.” He admitted. All he had to do was keep his sister company and make sure no one tried to interfere with her while she sat in the bar. It was a shame, he reflected, that in this day and age an unaccompanied young lady couldn’t sit in a bar at an exclusive hotel without being interfered with.
“But there you have it.” He said aloud.
“Have what?” Haley asked. She swallowed some of her wine. It was of local manufacture and not particularly good, but her devotion to Union principles compelled her to order it rather than an import.
“Nothing. Hey, fella!” Gilbert called to the bartender. “Another one, please.”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Haley asked.
“Another red wine too.” Gilbert pointed at his sister’s glass.
“No thank you. I doubt I’ll finish this one.” Haley smiled at the bartender.
“This is hard work.” Gilbert explained as he took up his new drink. “I’m not used to playing bodyguard.”
“You’re not a ‘bodyguard.’” Haley was quick to contradict him.
“Hey, is this your guy?” Gilbert asked, nodding towards the door through which a man of medium height in a plaid jacket had just entered.

Paper and Pencil are Requested and Subsequently Supplied

“Was there something wrong with the hotel stationery?” Winston O’Keefe asked Malcolm Jamaica as he handed over the requested materials.
“Yes.” Jamaica replied, but appended no explanation. He dismissed the hotel man and returned to his seat at the desk in his suite. He had opened the parcel from the Meshadal Cartel and was in the process of exploring its contents.
A slim, hard backed notebook lay open before him on top of the wrapping paper in which it had been sent. Contrary to Jamaica’s assumptions, the interior of the wrapping had not been covered in helpful hints towards the deciphering of the notebook.
“In fact,” Jamaica wrote in his secret diary, “The contents of the notebook seem relatively straightforward.”
Ignoring the thump of the television in the suite next door, Jamaica began drawing a sketch of the Deshafter device. Each component was labeled and its function explained, within the limits of Jamaica’s technical training. When this was done, he folded up the paper and inserted it into a crude envelope he fashioned from the parcel’s wrapping. He consulted his index card and discovered that he needed to shave. This he proceeded to do, after which he set out to contact the Claktion, with the envelope containing the sketch in his coat pocket.
“Is the Claktion in?” Jamaica asked at the desk in Brutowski Heating and Air’s billing department.
“Who should I say is asking?” The obese, middle-aged woman at the desk asked.
“The name is Colonel Wizard.”
“Colonel Wizard.” The woman repeated for confirmation.
Jamaica nodded. She withdrew into the narrow corridors between shelves crowded with boxes full of records, some dating back to the founding of the city a lifetime ago. While Jamaica waited he looked at the ancient calendar on the wall opposite. The year was 1978, but the numbers on the days matched exactly the present year. The picture for that month was a chimpanzee dressed as a golfer.

The Little Fish I Throw Back

Jamaica returned to his rooms still in good spirits from his conversation with the Claktion. Immediately upon entering, however, he sensed that something was wrong. His nose, chemically altered during his two years of training at the laboratorium, was exceptionally sensitive. It detected an odor out-of-place in the sumptuously appointed suite.
“It’s the smell of sweat.” Jamaica thought. “The smell of the lower class, with their lack of interest or appreciation for the things of the intellect.” His eyes darted around the room. Could the intruder still be there, hiding, waiting to plunge a knife or stabbing weapon into his soft flesh?
Where would I hide, Jamaica asked himself. A useless question, he concluded, as the place where he would hide, somewhere clever and original, would never be thought of by this stinky intruder. Stealthily, Jamaica padded further into the room.
“Too bad I didn’t come armed.” He reproached himself. Just why he hadn’t brought a weapon remains a mystery, although many have speculated that Malcolm Jamaica was, at heart, a peace-loving fellow.
He turned the television (heretofore untouched during his stay) up as loudly as it would go. Having checked the rest of the suite, he now turned to the bathroom. Seizing the final option with a craziness born of the fear of what might be, Jamaica jumped into the bathtub, tearing the shower curtain down and around the sunburned stranger hiding within.
“You better get the fuck off me!” The intruder, a common redneck by his speech and appearance, threatened.
“Or what?” Jamaica laughed. Before the man could answer, Jamaica had jerked him out of the tub and slammed his head into the toilet bowl. He brought the porcelain (not plastic) seat down again and again.
“You were saying?” He asked after he had released the man and watched him slump to the floor, blood pouring from his nose and mouth.
The redneck, who would later marvel that the slim, five foot eleven Jamaica had tossed him around so easily, knew only that he was beaten. He answered Jamaica’s questions readily enough, providing Jamaica with more information than he could fit into place at that time.

The Exact Quote Escapes Me

That afternoon Jamaica called Don, his roommate, and asked him to mail him his paralyzer cone.
“The descroter?” Don Durkee asked.
“If you want to call it that.” Jamaica sighed. “However, it’s not properly a descroter cone.”
“It’s common parlance, Malcolm.” Durkee sometimes found Jamaica exasperating.
“Maybe so, but could you get that in the mail today?”
“Yes, I will.” Durkee agreed. He hung up and went to Jamaica’s room in the townhouse. There, over the bed, was the poster of Miles Davis. Durkee tried to remember exactly what Miles had once said to Hugh Masakela, but couldn’t. It had made a big impression on Masakela and it had made a big impression on Durkee when Jamaica had told the story to him. Something about the uniqueness of your experience being the defining factor in your life as an artist. As Durkee pulled the shoebox from under the bed he reaffirmed his commitment to his art.
Packaging the paralyzer cone took no more than ten minutes and driving down to the post office another fifteen. Durkee was back at his drafting table in less than half an hour. He took up his pen and faced the job before him.
Don Durkee wrote and illustrated his own magazine called “Large Unit Savings.” The central feature of the magazine was a comic strip called the “Clam.” The latest installment of this bewilderingly inept creation was what lay before him awaiting completion. He had only recently added the strip’s first recurring character, a squat, Ziggy-like man named Burris, easily distinguished by his bizarre headgear. Durkee was forty years old and he had only the slipperiest grasp of what he was doing.
Still, he reminded himself as he cast about for anything to distract him from his self-appointed chore, at least I please myself. Some of the other artists he knew (“real artists,” he characterized them) were puzzled that Durkee was not only satisfied but apparently thrilled by the scratchy, sloppy figures he turned out.

No More Intolerant Than Any Other Codification

Keeping track of all the characters he was introducing into Clam gave Don Durkee a headache. Friends might urge him to take the easy way out, to give up on the whole business altogether, but his strong sense of obligation (read guilt) wouldn’t allow him such cowardly options.
He completed what he felt was a sufficiently difficult page of panels and stood up from the table, guilt temporarily assuaged. He looked down at the page. It was good work. It pleased him. Having Reygould reveal his ability to play the piano to his fellow travelers on the space blimp had been exactly the kind of thing his comic had been missing until now. A nagging voice inside Durkee insisted on an answer to the question, “What next?” but Durkee was used to ignoring that one. He made it all up as he went along and that was what worked for him.
Previously the owner of a dry goods store, Reygould, along with his friend the bear-man Loper, had been invited to visit the nearby moon of Babweallgo on a space blimp owned by Twist and Come Industries, for whom the mysterious Mr. Scofield, who had issued the invitation, apparently worked. Sarah, however, had her doubts.
“I have… misgivings about this trip.” She told Mrs. Goofe.
“You doubt the bona fides of Mr. Scofield?” Mrs. Goofe asked.
“I doubt lots of things.” Sarah replied.
Meanwhile Reygould, having finished playing the short instrumental piece he called, “Pock-Marked Pecker,” had begun playing a song called, “Give Me All of Your Hot Cheese.” He sang along as he played, displaying a voice that could only achieve acceptable volume if it was embarrassingly high. Of course, readers of the comic had no direct knowledge of this, as voices are notoriously hard to draw. It was left to Connors, a disembodied head that made occasional commentary on the comic’s action, to inform them.
“Reygould himself,” Connors told the reader (should there ever happen to be one), “Didn’t see anything wrong with his voice. Of course, he was forever justifying himself by saying things like, ‘Well, Captain Beefheart’s got a less-than-mainstream voice and he’s made a career for himself, so why can’t I?”

Flat-Rate Dybbuk

In a like manner, I am constantly telling people (should there ever happen to be any) that if Richard Brautigan (or whoever) could get away with the kind of writing he laid down, then surely no one should have a problem with what I do.
“But that was thirty years ago and more,” is the kind of response to my statement that I am prepared for. Should anyone ever make it, I am ready. Exactly what I’ll say I don’t know, but the transparency of such objections to my rationalizations should be evident to even the most reluctant of my readers (should there ever happen to be any).
It is only by constantly pulling back and revealing more and more viewpoints that I am able to maintain interest in my work. Now, I wouldn’t admit that to just anyone, but, having already told you of my ridiculous, self-serving comparisons, I feel that you can handle the greater truth. The minutia of fiction is tedious to me. I like to keep things moving. They say never complain, never explain, and yet here I am doing just that, but I really don’t know who “they” are and, besides, I’ve seen Brautigan explain things several times, so I guess I have permission. No English teacher is going to come down on me.
Connors, winking into view in the foreground so that the little Icelandic cowboy taking a nap in the adjacent booth is partially obscured, observes,
“Toadsgoboad usually has at least one of these spells per book. They seem to coincide with periods of either self-doubt or fatigue. As annoying as they are, the powers that be have decided to leave this one in out of reverence for tradition and because, in truth, it seems that a little whining is a small price to pay for such insights into the literary process.”
Letters objecting to either Connors’ appearance or his comments may be addressed to Don Durkee at Big Unit Savings, 120 Obsolete Mill Road, Turdley, Catatonia. Personally, I object to the way he has depicted me: a greasy-haired old man on the cusp of obesity, but I won’t bother writing him any letters. I know he has a lot on his mind at the moment. He’s worried whether the paralyzer cone will reach his friend in time and how he’s going to spend the rest of the day. The last thing he wants to do is sit back down at that drafting table.

Assembled From the Koala Tin

“Any mail for me?” Jamaica asked at the front desk.
“I’ll check, Mr. Jamaica.” The attendant replied.
“Expecting a Christmas card?” A voice at Jamaica’s back asked. It was Haley Pantomimic, standing there in turquoise pantaloons and a man’s white undershirt, cunningly cut and sewn to emulate the look of a dentist’s lab coat.
“Hardly.” Jamaica smiled, though he felt the woman’s line had been lame.
“Here you are, Mr. Jamaica.” The desk attendant recalled Jamaica’s attention. He handed him a package wrapped in the comics section of the Turdley Truthspeaker.
“Thank you.”
“So you do celebrate Christmas.” Haley said with smiling eyes and a gesture at the package.
Jamaica made light of the remark. “Sure, doesn’t everybody?” He told Haley that he was going back to his room before setting out for the day. “Would you like to join me?”
“That’s kind of what I had in mind.”
In the elevator the woman continued, “I need to speak to you in private.”
“Understood.”
“Aren’t you going to open your present?” Haley asked once they had settled themselves in the anachronistic chairs.
“Why not?” Jamaica replied. As he tore off the wrapping paper he invited Haley to begin talking.
“The Union is concerned about your association with a creature called the Claktion. While it is one of the fundamental tenets of our creed to advocate the brotherhood of all mankind, we do not feel that this policy should be extended to persons of xenonymous origins and… what is that?” She interrupted herself to ask.
“A paralyzer cone.” Jamaica told her. “You may have heard it called a descroter, but that is a xenonymous term, incorrectly applied.”
“What’s it for?”
“Inducing paralysis.” Jamaica explained. He then shot the woman.

Production Interrupted by Mouse Tribute

The Lunar Mice of Babweallgo, of whom the Claktion was the largest and most noteworthy example, had a contractual lock on the movement of gum pastes and naval jellies through the portagerie. Naturally, then, it was to the guild council of the Lunar Mice that the city commissioners complained when interruptions in the flow occurred.
“What’s the problem now, Randolph?” Asked Ned Longley, commissioner for the third district. “Is it a holy day for Saint Whiskers?” Several people laughed, but most kept silent. This was serious business.
“Actually,” Randolph Gunch straightened his glasses and moved closer to the microphone, “We’re in the middle of a tribute.”
“A what?” Longley demanded. He had no use other than a contractually obligated practical one for the Lunar Mice and no respect for their customs or culture.
“To whom?” Brenda Filtre, the fifth commissioner, and a person of more tact and education then Longley, added.
“A great mouse.” Gunch’s face took on as much of a rapturous look as it could, given the inherent limitations of mouse physiognomy. “A wonderful mouse, Sir Neville Slacks.”
“They must have other, more subtle facial clues as to their emotions.” Thought Birk Bravely, a reporter for the Rome Rooter. He determined to look into the matter at the first opportunity, but for now his assignment was clear: keep an eye on the young woman in the baggy turquoise pants and the cheap lab coat who was hovering behind Colvin Stabber, commissioner for the second district. No one seemed to know who she was. Bravely felt he had seen her before, but couldn’t say where. Twice during the hearing she had passed Stabber notes. What connection did she have to the commissioner?
“I respect your natural inclination to ignorance, commissioner,” Randolph Gunch was saying, “But I will not placidly sit here and listen to you belittle my people and our traditions.”
“Would some cheese mollify you?” Longley asked. No one laughed this time. “I think we could round some up.”
“Commissioner Longley!” Brenda Filtre snapped. “Do I have to remind you that our economy depends on gum pastes and naval jellies?”

Useful Inducements Treed by a Matronly Steamboat

As arranged, the Claktion met Malcolm Jamaica by the pond in the middle of the city’s Aggragente Park.
“You’re looking well.” The stout Lunar Mouse greeted Jamaica as he sat down on the bench next to him.
“It’s been a long time since the Orchard.” Jamaica replied, referring to events not discussed in this chronicle.
“Yes.” The Claktion agreed with a weary sigh. “Sorry we couldn’t talk at Brutowski’s, but you know how it is… wage slave and all that.”
“I seem to remember.” Jamaica mused. “I used to be a bag boy, you know.”
“No, I don’t.” The Claktion looked out at the pond. The sentient, miniature steamboat that resided there had hounded a flock of partially flightless geese into the tree that grew in the middle of the water.
“I feel like one of those birds.” The Claktion remarked. “I should be flying far away from here.” He raised a palm to the sky. “But I can’t. Goddamn obligations.” His palm, now a fist, dropped like a dead body.
“Well, I didn’t come here to discuss old times.” Jamaica said, “Or present difficulties. I came to Rome to deal with the future. And that future,” he continued, turning to a small satchel and pulling out several sheets of paper, “Of a necessity involves you, my friend.”
The Claktion took the proffered sheets, but did not look at them. His gaze remained on Jamaica’s face.
“You’ve come to rob Prince Hopshi.” He stated. “Perhaps to kill him.”
Jamaica said nothing. He tapped the top page of the documents in the Claktion’s hand.
“This is a transcription of a page from a notebook sent to me by the Meshadal Cartel.” He indicated. “It purports to describe an adapter ring made to fit the deshafter.”
“Adapter ring?” The Claktion wondered, looking down at the text. “Adapt the deshafter for what? To do what? What is this, Malcolm?”
“Hold that thought.” Jamaica whispered. “Someone is watching us from the Potato Monument.”
The Claktion reached into his trousers pocket.

Andie Attended More than One Drama School

That evening Gilbert Pantomimic had a date. The woman, Andie Triptofit, was an actress with the Kleptomagic Theater Group. Gilbert shared an apartment with his sister. The fact that he hadn’t seen her all day and had no idea where she was did not bother him at all. Haley was often gone for days on secret Union business, and besides, this meant he and Andie could have the apartment to themselves.
After the movie (The Potato that Ate Mr. Ragland), which lasted far longer than Gilbert expected or desired, he and Andie had dinner at a cheap, but exotic restaurant whose cuisine was of some bizarre ethnic derivation. Finally, the two arrived back at the apartment.
“I really liked that restaurant.” Andie confessed for the third or fourth time since exiting the place.
“I thought you would.” Gilbert said as he scanned the music on offer. “Artists and actors often have more open minds than the average person. I can’t drag my sister there.”
At this reminder of the absent sister, whom Gilbert had told Andie shared the apartment, she looked around for evidence of her habitation. Yes, there was a picture of a bowl of flowers and there a stack of laundered, folded women’s clothes.
“Which one is her room?” Andie asked.
Gilbert looked up. He had decided on an old album by James Taylor. Just the right touch, he thought. He nodded towards the hall.
“The one on the left.” He said.
“Can I look?”
“Sure. I’m going to put some music on, OK?”
“That sounds great.” Andie replied, rising from the sofa and heading towards the hall. Gilbert took advantage of the interval to knock back a swallow of scotch. As Andie peered into the typical, if slightly severe, girl’s bedroom and compared it to the contrasting vision represented by Gilbert’s room across the hall, she heard voices.
“What’s wrong with you?” Gilbert demanded of Haley, who stood unsteadily in the kitchen, pale and haggard.

Scouring the Corner

Prince Hopshi’s best agent, Green Purbrick, an ugly, evil man, and not one you’d want your daughter spending time with (although he was exactly the kind of man that women are inexplicably attracted to, much to the bafflement and consternation of guys like you and me), sat in the window of a disused office across the street from the corner where Malcolm Jamaica was expected to put in an appearance.
“With any luck,” Prince Hopshi had told Purbrick, “We’ll be able to find out who the cartel is using to contact this man.”
“I already know what you want done to Jamaica.” Purbrick worked his tongue at a piece of goat meat stuck between his teeth. Incongruously, they were pearly white. One would have expected (at least I would have, from my childish vantage point) his thug’s face to be set with a drunkenly crooked assembly of chompers resembling kernels of boiled yellow corn. “What about whoever meets him?”
“The same thing.” Prince Hopshi replied.
“Then I’ll have to take care of him first.” Purbrick had enough respect for his employer’s wealth and power to spit the freed food particle into a rag and not on the floor. This consideration was not given to many.
“Why’s that?”
“Because dealing with Jamaica’s going to take some time.”
Prince Hopshi paced to a three-thousand-year-old vase on a pedestal.
“You think he’s that good?” He asked, his eyes on the scene of debauchery painted on the vase’s surface.
“From what I’ve heard.” Purbrick answered. “I’ve never met him myself, but I know people who’ve seen him in action.”
The prince considered.
“Interesting.” He commented.
Green Purbrick massaged his unusually developed forearms as he sat in the window. The tattoo of the snarling, two-headed leopard was further up, on his right bicep, concealed beneath the sleeve of his black, silk t-shirt. He owned a motorcycle and lived in a treehouse. The thoughts that ran through his head were abstracted images of wealth in black and white.

The Kangarooic Handle Nicely that Forgotten Aplomb

Currently the Kleptomagic Theater Group was readying the play “Duckie’s Folding Hammer” for performance. This would be their first production in their new theater, a gift from Stan Chandler, an alumnus of the Kleptomagic now a big star on a hit television program.
Andie Triptofit had secured the role of Grinka, a partially flightless asthmatic whose bakery always seemed to run out of pastries before Drake, an occasional customer and would-be cartoonist, could purchase one. To perform the role properly, Andie was practicing a vaguely Slavic accent. She put wooden clogs on her feet and went downtown, speaking in character to everyone she ran into.
“Andie!” Carmella Quintabos greeted the actress cheerily. “Don’t those shoes hurt?”
“Why, yez, dey hurd me ferry mush.” Andie replied.
“What’s wrong with your mouth? Did you put clogs on your tongue as well?”
“No, Carmeyla. I am practissing for a playh.”
And so it went, all week long, Andie driving people crazy, but also enduring their good-natured ribbing. Ribbing is usually good-natured. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but it’s true. It’s probably redundant to add the “good-natured” part. I could just write “ribbing” and you’d probably assume that it was gentle and friendly in nature.
The play, written by Diologus the Elder in the eighteenth century, concerned the introduction of the folding hammer into an isolated village by the trickster Duckie and the changes wrought in the inhabitants’ lives thereby. Andie was required to wear a red frog costume.
“But why?” She demanded, once this requirement was made belatedly known to her.
“It’s tradition.” Brad Bonler explained tersely. Anyone who didn’t know that had no business being onstage. He snapped his little memorandum book closed and stepped away to confer with Dirk about the live geese needed for Act Two.
“Tradition.” Andie repeated aloud. She turned and stared blankly at the backdrop being painted. Red and yellow, it was the sky over Hell.

Malcolm Jamaica Under the Influence of Small Pool Dynamics

After killing the small man with the moustache, whose wallet was now in a pocket in his jeans, Green Purbrick chased Malcolm Jamaica down the street and into a health club. The killer had been stunned to see his target run away like that, but initially explained it to himself as some kind of clever ploy. Now, however, as he held Jamaica’s head below the surface of the wading pool, he began to think that the reports he had heard of the man’s prowess had been greatly exaggerated. Or, he thought with a smug grin, was it that he was just so much better?
Jamaica’s thoughts were on the rebreather unit he held in his mouth. Would it really last as long as its manufacturer claimed? And even if it did, what then? Surely even an anti-intellectual like this killer would begin to suspect something when Jamaica failed to drown in a reasonable amount of time. He could reach his paralyzer cone, but had no idea what its effects would be if discharged under water. If only someone would come along and save him as so often happened in the movies.
Purbrick pulled Jamaica up after the latter stopped thrashing about with a convincing display of lifelessness. That would have been his big mistake had Jamaica been able to shoot him with the cone. However, his hand couldn’t clear the surface of the water. He fired anyway, reasoning that at least he and Purbrick were both in the same position, legs in the pool, heads above. The paralysis wave emitted by the cone, diffused by the water and subtly altered by its heavy chlorine content, blew the two men apart and evaporated most of the water in a blast of steam.
The first to recover was Purbrick. He lunged at Jamaica, but, like something out of a movie, was stopped by a forty-pound dumbbell heaved by sixty-two-year-old Mike Asplundh.
“Thank you!” Jamaica cried enthusiastically. “I owe you a debt that I can never fully repay!” He said this as he bent over Purbrick’s unconscious form. He retrieved both the wallet Purbrick had taken from the cartel man as well as Purbrick’s own. He then added to the blood pouring from the killer by slashing his throat with a pocketknife.
“What the hell are you doing?” Demanded the old weightlifter.

Twisted Freezer Whines of Old-Fashioned Love

Prince Hopshi, out of his immense regard for Purbrick, claimed the latter’s body in person from the city morgue.
“Prince Hopshi, this is an honor.” The attendant, a middle-aged hunchback, greeted the proud, but shaken man.
“For me as well.” Hopshi replied, looking not at his interlocutor, but at the battered corpse. He had thought this man indestructible.
Looking solemnly at the body, he had to admit that the man had been ugly. He had lied to himself, seeing Purbrick with various women over the years, told himself that there was a sexiness there, but now he faced the truth: Purbrick looked like an ape and those women had been trash.
Prince Hopshi nodded at the two assistants he had brought with him. They hefted the body into a casket. The hunchback presented the prince with a form on a clipboard to sign. This was done and the royal entourage left.
After they had gone the morgue attendant, whose name was Oshuna, addressed himself to Brutle, the janitor.
“I think the prince had a little crush on the late Mr. Purbrick.” He said.
The janitor said nothing. He merely chewed his gum and leaned on his mop.
“I’ve heard stories that the prince is a free thinker in such matters. Not an out and out homosexual, maybe, but a man willing to admit to himself certain feelings, whatever they may be, and not concerned with what the public thinks. Well, you can see that by the way he runs his business.” He put his hand into a bag of chips and stared at the door. “Lives up there in the penthouse at the Troglydata and sends out his paid assassins with no more concern about what the city commission thinks than he would over the cost of a… bag of chips.”
Brutle glanced at the door and shifted his gum to the other side of his mouth.
“There’s nothing wrong with a man being in love with another man, you know.” Oshuna added suddenly, looking at Brutle sharply. “It doesn’t even have to be expressed sexually, although it often was in the old days. I’m talking about classical times, you understand. The Greeks, the Romans, hell, even the Persians. There was a brotherhood of men back then.” He crunched his chips and continued, “So what if there was a little buggery involved?”

While David Sanborn Tootled Like a Muppet

Steve Sharp and Gregory Moore, late of the second version of Gone (Greg Ginn’s second-most famous band) bashed away in counterpoint to the random images flashing on the wall behind them.
“So this is what they did after Gone.” Malcolm Jamaica mused. He was sitting in the Fishhead Lounge wearing a fake beard. He didn’t care much for the clientele of the bar; it was mostly college kids. He did like the music, however. “This is exactly the kind of thing David Sanborn should be doing.” he thought.
Jamaica didn’t care for bars in the first place. They made him feel uncomfortable, but this was the only place that the Claktion would agree to meet him.
“Old Brutowski suspects me, I’m sure of it.” The Claktion, also wearing a fake beard, told Jamaica.
“I don’t understand why you don’t take a job with your brothers on the portagerie. Surely it isn’t some psychological aversion to gum pastes and naval jellies.” Jamaica wondered.
“Maybe it is.” The Lunar Mouse, whose ears were concealed beneath a trendy stocking cap covered in glitter, replied seriously. “But more than that, I like being my own mouse.”
“Which is why you sort billing records for an alcoholic.”
“That’s just for now.” The Claktion defended his job. “As soon as an opening… opens up, I’ll be moved to a service and installation job. I’ll have my own van and be free to ride the roads.”
Jamaica sighed.
“I’m happy for you.” He said. “It pleases me to know your future is assured while I flee into the unknown.”
“Better than staying here.” The Claktion reminded him. He handed over the forged documents and airplane tickets Jamaica had requested. “Take these and may the moon look kindly on you.”
Abruptly he left, before the strange lachrymosity of his species could give him away.
“Your friend sure is hairy.” A woman at an adjacent table said to Jamaica.
“Surely.” Jamaica corrected, though the woman didn’t see that.
“I like ‘em that way.” She nodded drunkenly.

Zartorese Trash Imputed Carrot

Zartor, capital of the Brown Cities, a federation of human settlements on Babweallgo, was Malcolm Jamaica’s next stop. On the long flight he, along with the other human passengers, had taken several doses of Hostilitol, a drug that would enable them to breathe the moon’s air. During their stay they would have to continue to take the drug twice a day. Jamaica hated it. It was bad enough that he already had to take three hormone replacement pills and a cholesterol-blocking pill every day for the rest of his life (the former because of some unnecessary surgery that he had never received restitution for, the latter because it had become manifestly evident that he was never going to get his diet under control), without adding another one to the regimen.
Stepping out onto the streets of Zartor, he inhaled his first unadulterated breath of lunar air. Despite the reassuring literature on the airplane, there was a definite odor to it, an unpleasant one to Jamaica’s senses. It reminded him of any number of the aftershave concoctions favored by men of his father’s generation. He knew that within a couple of days he wouldn’t notice it, but for now its distasteful associations with anachronism, authority, and assimilation gave him the creeps. This stage of his journey would turn out badly; he could feel it.
In keeping with his disguise as Medford Pooles, a photography realtor from Virtual Vermont, he didn’t take any place approaching the luxury of the Troglydata. Instead, he lodged with Mrs. Paneer, an elderly, but spry, lady whose upstairs room was comfortable enough and, more importantly, had its own private entrance at the top of a flight of outside stairs.
“Do you know of any second-hand bookstores in the area?” Jamaica asked his new landlady.
“My goodness, are you a reader, Mr. Pooles?” Mrs. Paneer asked, wide-eyed.
“Yes.” Jamaica nodded solemnly, as if owning up to his vital role in the preservation of all civilization. “Yes, I am.”
“Well, my goodness, my last couple of tenants didn’t do anything but watch the TV all day and all night.”
“You won’t hear any TV from up there while I’m here, Mrs. Paneer.” Jamaica promised.
“Well, you know,” the old woman informed him, “The cable bill is included with your rent.”




Bullets on the Side What Conjuring Mr. Editor

By Friday Jamaica had installed a small library of paperbacks in his room. Almost every book was in the fantasy or science fiction genres.
“There’s really only the thinnest of lines separating those two classifications.” He opined to Jimmy Previte, a fellow member of Merlin’s Minions, a local discussion group for speculative fiction enthusiasts.
“I think that’s very insightful.” Previte replied, gazing warmly at his new friend. “You should take over the editorship of the group’s newsletter.”
“‘Merlin’s Mighty Staff?’” Jamaica said wonderingly.
“That’s the one.”
Ben Stodge, the current editor, didn’t like the idea.
“Come on, fellas.” He begged at the next meeting. “I know circulation is down, but once we move to color printing, I know things will pick up. Besides,” He added with more than a little desperation, “The movie version of Savages on Saturn is coming out this spring. You know I’ve got a big, special edition of the ‘Staff’ planned to coincide with the release.”
None of these arguments, nor appeals to sentiment, moved the other eight members of the group, all of whom had rapidly come to respect their newest member, Malcolm Jamaica.
“The Blackest of Magics.” Stodge complained to his mother at breakfast.
What did put a stop to the attempted transfer of the editorship was Stodge’s threat to disallow any further use of his basement for the group’s meetings should this “coup,” as he called it, take place.
“Sorry about that.” Jimmy told Jamaica in the street after the meeting.
“It’s alright, brother.” Jamaica assured him. “I’ve got another maneuver in my sea chest.”
“That’s what Cylak said to Minerva 23 at the end of Bridge to Zombietown!” Jimmy cried.
Jamaica nodded with much authority.
He said nothing more just then, but went home and began work on the creation of his own newsletter.
“I think I’ll call it ‘Boron’s Eternal Half-Life.’” He said.
“It sounds wonderful.” Mrs. Paneer agreed.

Haste to Corporal Endocrine

Meanwhile, Don Durkee had abruptly ceased work on Clam in favor of a new comic he had tentatively titled, Stylized Titty.
“It will appear in Large Unit Savings, just like Clam did;” he explained to a disinterested neighbor, “I’m not giving up on the magazine.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to do that.” The other man continued to water his begonias as he answered.
Corporal Endocrine, the main character in the new work, explained things in more detail to the folks at home.
“I know ‘folks at home’ is such a cliché,” Endocrine said as he walked along a quiet suburban street of Arts and Crafts bungalows, “But I dread referring to you as my ‘readership.’ I feel that this will finally be the narrative angle that I’ve been looking for.”
Like Durkee, Endocrine was a heavily bearded cartoonist. Should anyone mistake him for a stand-in for his creator, however, Durkee had endowed him with a desirable girlfriend and a secret identity as a secret agent. It was rumored that Endocrine had another, more practical endowment as well, but, as Durkee’s parents were still alive and might actually read one of his comics some day, Durkee refrained from including material that might cause his parents to feel uncomfortable and himself embarrassment in the face of their discomfort, or discomfort in the face of their embarrassment. Either way, it was not a mature relationship that he had with his parents. His real-life girlfriend, Padua Memphit, often chided him over this inane self-censorship, but Durkee could barely hear her when he was working on his comics.
“Honestly,” Padua screeched, “I don’t know why I still hang around with you. You pay no attention to me. You can’t see beyond that piece of paper you’re doodling on!”
“Yeah.” Durkee replied absently.
“Look, Don!” Padua yelled, pointing at the window, “The world is coming to an end! We’re under attack!”
“Just a minute.” Durkee growled. He could hear her words, but the ones in his head were louder and made more sense.

The Monster Reveals an Opaque Facet

While working on the latest installment of Boom Nutmeg, Corporal Endocrine received word that the Eyelash Consortium, one of the many evil organizations he had fought over the years, was planning to auction off the stolen plans for the deshafter to the highest bidder.
“And none of those bidders will be ones to refrain from putting the deshafter to some nefarious purpose.” Endocrine’s contact, Lawrence, intoned gravely.
“Exactly what is the deshafter?” Endocrine laid aside his expensive pen and asked.
“Well,” Lawrence adjusted his bottom on the undersized stool, “At this point the deshafter is purely theoretical. No one knows if it will really work. Oh, there are detailed blueprints, of course, but no one has ever built the device.”
“Yes, but what does it do?” Insisted the secret agent/cartoonist.
“One of two possible things:” Lawrence counted them off on his thick, mottled fingers. “One, it will enable the user, no matter how untutored in the science of farming, to grow perfectly edible cucumbers, every time.”
“Impressive.” Endocrine admitted. “And the other?”
“Two, it will enable the user to quit his job and make a living at cartooning.” Lawrence said this knowing what it would mean to Endocrine. He said it evenly and without hesitation, keeping his eyes on Endocrine’s. For this Endocrine was grateful, later even going so far as to write him a letter expressing his gratitude.
“My god, Lawrence, that machine must never be built!” He was emphatic, pounding a soft toy version of Boom Nutmeg with his powerful cartoonist’s fist.
Lawrence nodded. He rose from the stool.
“When can you leave?” He asked.
“Immediately.” Endocrine replied. “Well, as soon as I finish this.” He gestured at the paper on his expensive, proper drawing table. “I’ve got Boom in quite a pickle at the moment.”
“Anything we at the agency can do to help out?” Lawrence offered.
“Well,” Endocrine tugged at his beard, “Boom could always do with some sort of anti-gravity-type boots.”

Entries Two Through Sixteen Overshadowed by Regulations

In between Merlin’s Minions meetings, and when he wasn’t working on his newsletter, Jamaica had taken up stalking Danielle Aptikas, a woman ten years his junior who worked for the Colloquia Rodentii, an organization dedicated to improving relations with the Lunar Mice. Jamaica didn’t care about her politics; he was fascinated with her long nose and wide mouth. Her heavy breasts and tall, lean carriage were also points of interest.
“To think of her spine struggling under the weight of that rack!” He enthused with watering mouth.
He had first encountered Danielle at the local shoe store, where he had gone as a favor to Mrs. Paneer. She had needed a pair of inserts for the men’s brogans she habitually wore. Jamaica suspected the shoes had belonged to her dead husband, but he had not yet confirmed this.
Ordinarily, Jamaica would have performed a silent ritual of lust over a girl as appealing as Danielle and let it go at that. However, there was something more about her, something that attracted him beyond the sexual. He kept his eyes open when he left the store and realized that he and the young woman were heading in the same direction. When he saw where Danielle lived, he knew he had to know more about her.
Danielle Aptikas lived in a C-shaped apartment house dating back to the beginning of the previous century. It was the kind of place that Jamaica would like to have lived in back when he was a young man.
“I could have attended classes and walked back to my charming little apartment where posters of great works of art lined the walls along with pictures of the great men who were my heroes.” He fantasized. Indeed, it was a fantasy, for Jamaica’s time in college had been lonely, frustrating, and all too brief. His bitterness over those lost years, however, was something he had successfully buried. He wondered, as he broke into Danielle’s empty apartment, if the current fruits of his life had been fertilized by the rot of that interred bitterness or if they had rather sprung from it like a fungus from windblown spores.
“I’m getting too contemplative.” He remonstrated with himself, fingering Danielle’s plain, practical, cotton panties.

Whether the Novelty Can Be Trusted

As a trained invesigator and operative, Malcolm Jamaica left no trace behind in his explorations of Danielle’s apartment. Nor did he take anything away other than information. He learned of the woman’s employment at the Colloquia Rodentii. This interested him more than the woman herself. It was the fact he had been looking for since he first saw her, although, of course, he hadn’t known exactly what the fact would turn out to be.
“I call it personal synchronicity.” He explained to an acquaintance many years later as he lay in a government-subsidized sickbed. “Things have a way of coming together in a subjectively coincidental manner if only you let them.”
“Kind of like that old Cheap Trick song.” The acquaintance, a would-be biographer from one of the larger of the Bovine Islands, replied.
“What is Cheap Trick?” Jamaica wondered in his delirium.
If an answer to that question was forthcoming it is neither recorded in the annals of that future time nor our business to pursue. We must join the younger, sharper Jamaica as he furtively entered the headquarters of the Colloquia Rodentii.
It was after hours and only a wretched, borderline autistic security guard remained in the building. Jamaica emerged from a potted plant in an office on the second floor and spent the first few minutes forcing himself to look through a secretary’s family photographs and trinkets as a way of getting his haste under control.
“After all, I’ve got all night.” He reminded himself.
One of the photographs showed the secretary, some twenty pounds lighter than her current arrangement, standing before an old cannon with her two children and some old woman obviously unrelated biologically to them. Frogs seemed to be the dominant theme among the trinkets that littered her desk, although there was a small plastic camel wearing a felt sombrero. Jamaica took a deep breath and moved on.
The offices were each connected to one or more others, like a system of caves going deeper and deeper into the building. By the time Jamaica came upon a collection of old-fashioned hats in a cupboard he had begun to wonder whether he would collapse from sensory overload.

The Remarks Clamber Like Donkey’s Asides

Jamaica hadn’t counted on the presence of the cleaning staff. He had just stumbled upon Danielle Aptikas’ desk when he heard the telltale rattle of mops and slurping of bad vending machine coffee. He slipped into a crawlspace and made his way up and up until he at last emerged in the executive officer’s private suite on the top floor.
The walls were paneled in heavy, dark wood, lined with nondescript (but all the more intriguing for being so) abstract expressionist paintings. The furniture was a mixture of the 1940’s and the late 1950’s. Looking around, all Jamaica could envision these rooms being used for were either cocktail parties or the most old-fashioned of trysts. Finally he discovered the conference room. As he dragged his fingers down the length of the polished table, he imagined Danielle making solitary visits to the sofa-filled room outside. The thought didn’t bother him; he wasn’t obsessed with the woman. However, the idea that she might be submitting to the sloppy attentions of some fat, middle-aged creep offended his sense of aesthetic righteousness. To be honest, he thought, she shouldn’t even be with someone like him. He had let himself go physically over the past ten years. No one would believe that he had once been the young man whom girls dropped by the convenience store just to ogle.
On the wall at the end of the table hung a framed photograph of several men in suits ostentatiously shaking hands with a group of Lunar Mice. Jamaica studied it closely. The picture was old, probably taken in the early seventies, about the time the Colloquia Rodentii had been founded.
“So it’s not all a sham.” He thought. “There really is some legitimate basis to this organization’s activities.”
The door behind him opened. Whirling around, Jamaica was confronted by a woman on the cleaning staff. Not a highly paid operative for nothing, he immediately took the offensive.
“Who are you?” he demanded irritably, putting his fists on his hips.
“The question is: who are you?” The woman returned.
“That’s right.” Jamaica agreed.
“Well?” The woman insisted, shifting her grip on her basket of cleaning implements, “Who are you?”

Clout, So Far a History, Sickens the Flyleaf

“I’m Diggerel Ognog.” Jamaica declared, tapping his chest, stating the name of a friend of the Claktion’s. “You must be Miss Aptikas.” He advanced on the cleaning woman with a smile and an outthrust hand.
The woman denied it. “No, I’m Dora Clabmake. I clean the offices. How’d you get in here?”
Jamaica ignored the question. “I’m sorry.” He said. “I’m still not used to your human form. I see one human female and naturally assume it’s the one I’ve spoken to over the phone.”
“What do you mean, ‘human?’” Dora the cleaning staffer asked.
Jamaica allowed himself a proud little simper. “Well,” he began, “I’m a Lunar Mouse. Oh, I know I look human.” He showed Dora his profile. “Pretty good, huh? But I’m not. I’m the first subject of the mouse-to-human surgery experiments.”
“Do what?”
“I had expected to see Miss Aptikas. Miss Danielle Aptikas?” Jamaica added, looked up at Dora expectantly.
“I know who she is.” The woman replied. “She doesn’t work after hours. Nobody does. I still don’t know how you got in here.”
“I’m a Lunar Mouse.” Jamaica insisted. “We have ways.”
“I’m going to call security.” Dora decided. She moved towards the phone on the wall to her right.
“OK.” Jamaica agreed, smiling idiotically. He followed Dora to the phone.
“No, you stay over…” Dora started to gesture with her basket, but Jamaica ended all discussion by delivering a solid punch to the woman’s head. She dropped to the heavy shag carpet unconscious.
“You hit a woman?” Doug Filabster, regional director for the department that Jamaica was subcontracted to, asked upon reading a description of the above scene in Jamaica’s report.
“She was a woman. That is correct.” Jamaica replied.
“We don’t hit women, Mr. Jamaica.” Filabster gouged the paper on his desk with his pen.
“Why not?” Jamaica wondered.
“Because we’re gentlemen.” Filabster replied. “Ever hear of the concept?”

Structured Data of Set

Of course Malcolm Jamaica had heard of the concept of “the gentleman.” Even before his mission had been concluded and he had had his dispiriting little confab with regional director Filabster, he had been pondering the subject and his own relationship to it. He considered himself a gentleman because to him a gentleman is one who strives to make others comfortable in his presence.
“I can’t remember where I read that definition.” He thought as he made his escape from the Colloquia Rodentii building. “I don’t even know why I’ve adopted that definition among the dozen or so out there.”
How he reconciled his understanding of the gentlemanly concept with making Dora Clabmake most uncomfortable is unknown. Jamaica was often inconsistent.
“Hypocritical, some call it.” He said to himself with snorting derision as he stepped into an all-night coffee parlor to enjoy a piece of pound cake before heading back to his room and the gift of sleep.
The next day he awoke at eleven thirty and went immediately downstairs, having slept in his clothes, to see if Mrs. Paneer had anything to eat. He didn’t want to have to bother with cooking; he had sworn that the first issue of Boron’s Eternal Half-Life would be ready for distribution by the next morning. The door to the old lady’s kitchen was locked, however. He could see a pot of boiling water on the stove. It appeared to be nearly boiled dry. He pounded on the door and called out, “Mrs. Paneer, Mrs. Paneer,” but was not answered. Fetching a tool from upstairs, he returned and opened the door with it. He turned off the burner and went looking for his landlady, again calling her name.
She was dead, collapsed, from what he could determine, within the previous hour on the floor of her tiny living room.
“What to do.” Jamaica muttered to himself. He stood up from crouching over the body and looked about. Was there anything he desperately needed to steal? Certainly nothing in the house was of much value. However, for the sake of future remembrance, he selected a small ceramic bear in fisherman’s attire. With this in his pocket he went back to the kitchen. He made himself a sandwich while he called the police.
“Did she have any relatives?” One of the policemen asked him after arriving.
“Gee, I hope not.” Jamaica nearly said aloud.

Cancelled, Sliding, an Old Day

Mrs. Paneer’s only child, a son named Rupert, flew in from Earth two days later.
“I may as well tell you: I’m selling the house.” The son, a tall, wide-hipped man in his early fifties, let Jamaica know.
“I figured you would.” Jamaica replied.
“Why?” Rupert Paneer eyed the lodger with suspicion.
“Just makes the most sense, you being from Earth.” Jamaica let the comment stand for everything that might be said.
Paneer nodded, allowing the other man to think that he understood all the possible subtext. Whether he should be offended or not, he didn’t know, but, to be safe, he threw out the following: “That will take some time, however, to make the arrangements. So you’ll have plenty of time to find another place to stay.”
Jamaica laughed. He could afford to.
“I’m not moving.” He said.
“Now look here…” Paneer began.
“I’ve got a six month lease.” Jamaica interrupted.
“Cancelled, with the death of my mother.”
“Oh, no, no, no.” Jamaica shook his head exactly as his own mother had done when denying him some quite impossible indulgence. “The contract is with the household. It stays in effect despite the owner’s demise.”
“I can’t sell this place with a lodger in residence!” Paneer conveyed his desperation to secure his legacy and return to the comfort and routine of his life back home.
Jamaica wanted to say, “Too bad,” but instead smiled. “That’s no problem.” He told Paneer. “Get a broker to handle the sale. Transfer the administration of the lease to him. I’ll pay the rent to him and you get a piece of it while you’re awaiting sale.”
Paneer considered it. He didn’t like the broker idea.
“I really don’t understand why you’re selling the place anyway. You could rent out the downstairs and have a nice income.”
“No.” Paneer negated that idea. “I… I want the whole thing off my hands.” No one knew it yet, but this was Paneer’s chance to divorce his wife.

The Lack of Pretence Endears the Director

Upon receiving a brief note from Jamaica regarding the death of Green Purbrick, regional director Doug Filabster passed it, along with his own disapproving comments, to central director Ken Labstien. The latter read the note and Filabster’s appendix aloud to his two main lieutenants, agents Brook and Knapple, as the three men sat in Labstien’s office.
“Oh, Doug!” Labstien chuckled once he finished reading. “You are a prude, aren’t you!” He looked at Brook and Knapple. “I don’t see how such a squeamish man got to be a regional director.” He shook his head.
“Well,” Brook replied, “His father was a big contributor to Senator Pulper’s coffers for years.”
“Was he?” Labstien pursed his lips. “Well, that explains it. Still, to get upset because this Jamaica guy terminated an opponent when the man was helpless… it’s just so much schoolboy angst. This isn’t chivalry times!” He boomed wide-eyed at Brook and Knapple. They laughed. Their boss was a character.
“Still,” Labstien sat back and looked to his right out the window. “It doesn’t pay to antagonize people. Especially a touchy little prude like Filabster. Tell me,” he turned back to his lieutenants, “Who is this Jamaica? Where’d he come from?”
Knapple opened a file in his lap and handed it over.
“He’s a subcontractor. Runs his own business when he isn’t working for us.”
“Well, who’s his contract through?”
“Toadsgoboad.”
“Ah.” Labstien vocalized, nodding with comprehension. “Now I see the roots of Filabster’s objections, his moral indignation.”
“Sir?” Brook wondered.
Labstien ran his tongue against the backs of his bottom teeth.
“Toadsgoboad’s a loose cannon.” He said. “We’ve never been able to put him firmly under our thumb. We work together, because it’s mutually beneficial to do so, but…” He let the matter drop. “Hey,” He said, brightening, reaching into a drawer in his desk, “Have you guys seen this one?” He brought out a small figurine of a camel dressed as a priest and set it on the desk.

Straightforward Narrative Adopted Reluctantly

I was having dinner with my good friend, Andy Summers, when word reached me of a possible problem with Malcolm Jamaica. After the distinctive message bell sounded, I begged Andy’s indulgence for a moment while I answered the summons. I pressed a button near the pepper shaker, a button which caused the rotogravonic apparatus to descend from the ceiling and drop over my head. I smiled at Andy and engaged the mechanism with the code word, “frappe.”
“Hello there, is this Toadsgoboad I’m speaking to?” came the voice of Wystan Hurgh, my liaison with the Department of Namelessness.
“Yes, Mr. Hurgh, what can I do for you?” I replied.
Andy signaled to a servant to bring him another ice cream parfait.
“Toadsgoboad, we’re having some trouble with the Jamaica narrative. We’d like you to do something about it, I’m afraid.”
“I’m afraid too when you start describing a man and his assignment as a ‘narrative.’ What seems to be the problem, old boy?”
“We feel that Mr. Jamaica seems to have gone somewhat off track, as it were.”
“How so?”
“Well, this side trip to Babweallgo.” Hurgh stammered. “Do you really think this is necessary? I mean, shouldn’t he be getting on with his mission?”
“Hurgh,” I spoke sternly, “Do you have any idea of all that Jamaica’s mission entails?”
“Well, I assume it’s to do with this deshafter…”
“A distraction, Hurgh.” I interrupted. “A mere distraction. A fascination in the mind of a long-legged pig. You show me a functioning deshafter and I’ll show you the terminus of this little ‘narrative.’”
“Well, Toadsgoboad, isn’t that what we want?” Hurgh demanded impatiently. “I mean, isn’t that what we’re working toward?”
“Hurgh,” I said, “I suggest you take a page from the contemporary philosopher and live for the moment. Enjoy the ride. It’s the journey, not the destination that counts.”
“But…”
“Good evening, Mr. Hurgh.” I ended the transmission and sent the Lucite dome back into the ceiling. “Sorry about that.” I said to Andy, who looked a mite bilious.

Stylistically I am Governed by Masturbatory Habits

“And what’s wrong with that?” you ask the observers in the room as you read the title of this piece and prepare to watch me flog myself. Rest assured, however, that I do not intend to denigrate my style or my technique. I do not find the fact expressed in the title to be one that I should be ashamed of. I write to please myself.
That being said, however, in the interest of harmony I contacted Malcolm Jamaica and gave him to understand that he should keep in mind the opinions of others when going about his aimless task. Appearances are important. One would like to be natural and loose, secure in one’s identity like a fat rock star, but in the day-to-day interchange of human relations this is one of the most difficult states to achieve. Just ask the next saint you come across. What the most difficult state of all to achieve is I cannot say. Probably equanimity in the face of inequity, but my experience in such matters is necessarily limited. I am a middle-aged fat-ass living in the middle of the most culturally benighted time period/geographic zone in all the corners and wrinkles on the madman’s map of the universe.
Jamaica, always amenable to my direction, agreed to carry on in the spirit I described to him, and, as I further suggested, to refrain from sending any more reports back home.
“It would only disturb them further, no matter what you were to say.” I explained.
“I don’t think they like me.” Jamaica complained.
“No, no, old boy; it’s me they don’t like. They’re just taking it out on you.” I hastened to reassure him, though I knew that deep down he didn’t give a shit. I know now, having read his posthumously published diary, that he knew that I didn’t give a shit either.
And so, neither of us gave a shit.
We laughed about it then, the unspoken joke standing between us like the unthinkable barrier of space separating his existence on the moon of Babweallgo from my slumped grounding in substandard housing out in the woods somewhere, a thousand unemployed rednecks waiting outside for a glimpse of the “non-believer.”

I Flash More Light on the Origin of the Tree

The tree whose great branches support the moons of Babweallgo, Kiffer, and Stunnage, and whose thirsty roots bind together the earth and its attendant travelers, the tree named in the ancient tongue Schlepperbaum, was grown from a tiny seed brought to these lands in the trousers pocket of the Man Who Ate With His Back Teeth, the inscrutable Dish Akimbo. No one knows where he acquired the seed. Some say he picked it out of the droppings of a pangolin that he followed back from the Purgatory of the Unwilling Contestant. Some have theorized that the seed was actually one of Akimbo’s rotten teeth, fallen out while eating pound cake. Akimbo’s own memoirs describe the seed as but one of dozens that he found in the bottom of a bag of hamburger buns. This last account has been discounted by most scholars, however, as Akimbo was both an imaginative liar and an illiterate. His so-called memoirs have long been rumored to be the work of a group of disaffected tragedians whose hopes for a revival of live drama as mass entertainment were doomed to failure from the beginnings of time.
Most people associate the sprouting of that tiny seed with the beginnings of time, but their associations only go to show just how ignorant the average man is. It is a widely-held belief, for example, that the tree is purely metaphorical and that the Urn of Happiness, said to be buried near its taproot, is something that each of us can find, if we only look inside our hearts. The truth is that we know with a fair amount of accuracy when the tree’s cotyledons first emerged into the sunlight and as for the Urn of Happiness, that was emptied long ago by George Clooney. (He has since been trying to fill it up again by means of an automated process that will put metaphor to shame, but so far success, in this regard, has eluded him.)
My personal knowledge of the tree is limited to what I have seen on old episodes of Crazy for Capital, a show that puts science in a financial perspective, where the tree is depicted in cartoon format as having sprung from the mind of a contract laborer at a privately funded research firm.
“Now for a refreshing Coca-Cola!” The anthropomorphized tree proclaims, while all the uniformed birds in its branches make that annoying “wooow” noise.

In Which the Phrase “In Which” is Assumed Present

Malcolm Jamaica, like most of his fellow humans, revered the tree. However, unlike a majority of them, he did not deify it, and thus did not engage in any active worship of it.
“The tree is just another object in the universe.” He explained to Andy Previte as another meeting of Merlin’s Minions broke up. “An extremely important one, no doubt, but still just another object like you or I.”
“I think that’s very insightful.” Previte replied, gazing thoughtfully at his new friend.
“Thank you.” Jamaica acknowledged the compliment.
“Well, I think it’s blasphemous.” Dirk Collateral announced tersely as he gathered his action figures into his book bag.
“I’m sorry.” Jamaica told him, though the look on his face hardly matched that sentiment.
“If the tree is just an ‘object,’ then how do you explain the miraculous fact of its existence?” Collateral demanded. Before Jamaica could respond, he went on, “If the tree’s root system—and this has been confirmed by science—were just a fraction less cohesive, then the tree could not stretch from here to Stunnage, and then our world wouldn’t be as extensive as it is!”
“Dirk,” Jamaica countered, “If the tree didn’t exist, then it wouldn’t exist.”
“And then we wouldn’t exist!” Collateral slung his book bag over his shoulder with a bark. “Science has proven that our existence is inextricably linked with the tree!”
“Yeah?” Jamaica pushed.
“So? How do you account for that?”
“Dirk, if we didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be here to argue about this, so what exactly is your point?” Jamaica wondered how far he should allow Collateral to propound his stupidity before he paralyzed him. Previte, however, jumped in.
“Dirk, how can you be a member of this group and not be at least open-minded about the possibility of a non-deified tree?” he asked.
“I am open-minded.” Collateral insisted. “I just have respect for tradition.”
“I don’t know why you come to these meetings.”
“This is the only place I have to show off my action figures.” Collateral confessed.

I Understand the Principle Behind the Resolution

I assume that by this point I should have made myself a greater presence in the narrative, but it was my understanding that my original intention was to allow Malcolm Jamaica to carry the bulk of the story. However, the exigencies of the pre-determined titles of the individual pieces seem to be forcing me to step in more often than I had reckoned on doing. Therefore, to account for my recurring intrusions I have had to devise a plausible excuse. In this instance, I have assumed the undesirable guise of the authorial interloper, one whose omniscience and omnipotence belie the very notion of dramatic tension. No point in rooting for Malcolm Jamaica if you know the game is rigged. Perhaps that isn’t exactly true: you know how your own story is going to end (admit it: deep down you know) and yet you continue to strive and hope for the one, true genuine miracle.
Once again the intermediary forces (or authorities) appealed to me to intervene in the narrative. I received the note, written on unjustifiably expensive paper, while I was climbing into a boat in my bathtub.
“So now they want me to interfere.” I griped. “I’ve intruded, interloped, and now I must interfere as well!”
“I believe the note says ‘intervene.’” The messenger, a senior official with the Bureau of Message Transmission, corrected me.
“It’s the same thing, young man.” I took the captain’s hat handed to me by a crewman and carefully fitted it over my delicately aligned hairdo.
“What message shall I return?”
“Tell them that, as past decisions insist on dragging me into this thing, I have no choice but to take an active role in the proceedings. Tell them I’m going to Babweallgo and see what I can do.”
“Very good, sir.” The messenger replied.
“No, young man, it is very bad. It’s not what I wanted, but…” I left my sentence unfinished, though my thoughts turned about it even as I gave the order to set the boat in motion.
“Isn’t it more of a ship, than a boat?” Asked a nephew of mine.
“No time for that discussion now,” I cried, “We’re heading straight down the drain!” And so we were.

I Explain How the Greenery Was Preserved

My first task, on arriving on Babweallgo, was to take a job as a tour guide with the Zartor Historic Downtown Society. Years ago, a German girl told me that the successful tour guide does not concern himself with the strict veracity of his statements to his charges. Thus it was with my tenure in the blue peaked cap and blazer while leading tourists about old downtown Zartor. To maintain both my self-respect and the secrecy of my sojourn on the moon, I wore a false beard and spoke with something approaching an Irish accent.
“This is the old Department of Postal Enthusiasm Building.” I told a group of war veterans and their wives. “Abandoned in the late 40’s due to infestation by ghosts, the building now houses the city’s Ecological Reclamation Service.” As I spoke we were driven by the building in an open-topped safari-type vehicle by our driver, Manfred. He glanced at me and then looked back at the road, smiling.
“What does the Ecological Reclamation Service do?” One old man, a retired air force colonel, spoke up.
“Well, as you know,” I said, “Babweallgo was originally a rocky wasteland. The first human colonists, restricted to only a tiny portion of the moon’s surface by the Lunar Mice, were forced to make do with what they had. They soon transformed the area into a paradise.”
“And that’s when those damned vermin tried to take the land back!” Another old man angrily added.
“Yes, well, I’m not allowed to interject any political commentary of my own into words while on duty,” I announced, “So I’ll just say…” Here I held up my thumb, to which all the old people laughed. One woman took my photograph.
“Anyway,” I continued, “Once industry and increased immigration from earth began in the early 70’s, it became imperative that that plant life be maintained. Hence, the establishment of the ERS.”
“And that’s how the greenery has been preserved.” Manfred said aloud, smiling.
I ignored him. “If you look to your left you will see the old distillery, which is also overrun with ghosts.”

Malcolm Jamaica is Sent to Furjur

It took me nearly a week to find out where Jamaica was staying.
“Nice place.” I commented, stepping inside at his invitation.
“Thanks.” Jamaica replied, his tone indicating that he thought I was being sarcastic.
“No, I mean it.” I insisted. “I’d love to have a place like this.” I looked about at the book-lined walls with envy.
“Well, thank you.” He sounded more convinced this time. He gestured at a chair, indicating that I should sit. “Would you like anything to drink?”
I did not and let him know this. I asked him to sit as well and he did. Then I got to the point.
“Your work here is completed.” I told him.
“Is it.”
“Yes. And this isn’t just my determination, but that of the Department.”
“I thought you didn’t answer to the department.”
“I do lots of things I don’t like and that I’m technically not compelled to do, like responding to the everyday inanities that people unthinkingly spout like, ‘How are you’ and ‘What’s going on.’ It doesn’t mean I agree with it all, but, dammit, I feel an obligation to maintain some level of civility.”
“OK, OK.” Jamaica rubbed his thighs with his palms. “It’s just that I can’t leave just yet.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, I’ve got a six month lease—one that I fought to keep, by the way.”
“I’ll take over your leave.”
“You?”
“That’s right. I told you I wouldn’t mind living here.”
“I’ve got other obligations as well, a newsletter, social contacts…”
“I’ll assume responsibility for all of them.”
“What’s the rush?”
“There are… time restraints. And remember, time and space are one.”
Jamaica considered. “Where am I going?”
“Furjur, the city of intrigue.”

Malcolm Jamaica Returns from Furjur All Sweaty

I had just completed my two weeks’ notice with the Historic Downtown Society when Jamaica returned.
“Back so soon?” I answered the door with a bite of apple in my mouth.
“Yeah, it was easy.” He said, stepping inside. “You mind if I have a shower before I report? I haven’t had one in several days.”
I caught a whiff of his bataa kusai as he passed before me.
“You’ve been eating animal by-products!” I accused.
“Yeah.”
He disappeared into the bathroom and I sat down to consider the report that I would have to make to him. What would he think of my meals, walks, and intimate conversations with Danielle Aptikas? Would he be upset that I had been to see Elfin Warlord Vs. Mulatto Numismatist with her? I glanced at the proof sheets of next month’s Boron’s Eternal Half-Life and decided to hide them under the trashcan. Jamaica might not like the pedantic bent I had given the publication. Not to mention the many cartoons from my own pen. I had started a comic strip called Frenzied Romantic that somehow had grown to take up more than half the newsletter.
“How’s the new landlord been treating you?” Jamaica asked, once he had sat down to a cup of peppermint tea.
“Oh, no problems.” I said.
“What did he do about the downstairs? Did he rent it out?”
“Yes.” I acknowledged. “There’s a family living down there now. Rather noisy at first, but I’ve managed to terrify them into behaving themselves.”
Jamaica ran his fingers through his wet hair, considering if he could do the same if he retook his place in the apartment.
“But all that can wait.” I reasserted dominance. “I need to know about your trip. Did you get it?”
Jamaica looked at me and nodded. He reached behind his ear, into the secret opening, and withdrew a long strip of paper like a grocery receipt.
“It’s damp.” I noted.
Jamaica nodded. “I think my seals need replacing.”

Malcolm, Now Called Jamaica for Our Purposes, Floats

Having tidied up the loose ends (manly farewell to Danielle; resignation from Merlin’s Minions; newsletter distributed to indifferent crowd; carefully executed arson) I packed and shipped both Jamaica’s books and Jamaica himself to Secret Lab #16. I set out for that same destination a few days later, after first verifying some of the information contained on the strip of paper Jamaica had delivered. Once I arrived at the lab, I knew a little more than you do at the moment.
“How’s the patient?” I asked Bob Woodstylus as I struggled into a lab coat with my name embroidered in blue over the left breast pocket. Together we stood facing the applications tank in which Jamaica floated, its florescent green liquid somehow enticing me.
“Don’t even think of climbing in there.” Woodstylus warned; he had seen and recognized that look in my eye.
“I wasn’t.” I lied.
“We wouldn’t even bother pulling you out. You’d be dead as soon as you touched the fluid.”
“OK!” I snapped. “Let’s move on. How’s Jamaica?”
Woodstylus consulted his clipboard. I studied his profile. Amazing how much like Tony Sales he looked. Of course, as my father or grandfather would have said, “No, Sales looks like him.” I won’t bore you with the obvious refutation of that attitude.
“He’s been abused quite badly. When was the last time you had him in for servicing?”
I thought about it. “I don’t think I’ve ever had him serviced.”
Woodstylus stared at me open-mouthed.
“Toadsgoboad! At the very least you should have this man’s oil changed every four months. You’re lucky he hasn’t completely locked down on you.”
I looked into the tank.
“He said something about his seals needing replacing. You checking that?”
“Of course. It’s all part of regular maintenance.”
“He’s important to me. He’s got to last at least another three weeks.”
“Longer than that, I would hope.” Woodstylus chided.
“Tools are important,” I said, “But never as important as the job they help one perform.”

Jamaica Thinks About Flakauk

What did Jamaica think about while undergoing his overhaul in the applications tank? Well, as you can see by the title of this piece, he spent at least part of his time thinking about flakauk. But, you ask, what is flakauk? That’s what I’m here for—to explain these things to you. You should be grateful I’ve got so much energy. Most people I know would be taking a nap or having some pointless conversation right now.
Flakauk, for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, is the all-inclusive term for the construction and maintenance of what we in the industry call reality surrogates. A good example of such a surrogate or package of surrogates is the world of Malcolm Jamaica, along with Malcolm Jamaica himself and everyone else you have met thus far in this narrative. Of course, I don’t use the term “flakauk;” I stick with “literature.” But that just shows how old-fashioned I am. Persons of Jamaica’s generation have taken to saying “flakauk” and though I am one who bridles at the digital interface of consciousness, I have no objection to their use of the term.
In the specific thoughts of Malcolm Jamaica, however, the earth and the tree and the three moons played no part. No, in the flakauk of Jamaica’s mind, the world was a giant bottle of seawater in the midst of which floated a great artificial island. On a throne in a room somewhere in one of the cubical buildings that covered the island like Picasso’s birthday cake sat Mr. Jamaica, dressed in regal finery.
“I see you like epaulets.” I noted cynically as I stood shackled before the throne.
“Make all the snotty comments you want.” Jamaica loftily invited. He could afford to keep his emotions in check, what with his island of minions and his expensive uniform. “Nothing you say will alter my resolve.”
“Still going to chuck me in the deep, eh?” I asked, one eyebrow arching up with all the panache of a George Clooney, but none of the self-deprecating charm. I took my panache seriously, dammit!
“That’s right.” Jamaica nodded at a couple of minions who proceeded to drag me outside and chuck me in the aforementioned deep. Unfortunately for Jamaica, his thoughts are my thoughts and I escaped by cutting a hole in the bottle and letting the water out.

Jamaica Buys an Undersized Vehicle

“I can’t let this one get away.” Jamaica said to himself as he examined the 1965 Henderson Tetragon.
“One thing I have to emphasize, however,” The salesman told him, “With this model you cannot neglect regular oil changes.”
“Isn’t that true of any skimmercar?” Jamaica asked.
“Yes, but you can usually get by with delaying it a month or so. Not with the Tetragon. Especially the 1965. The anti-sclerotic pavilions are so finely milled that the deviation of dithyrambs between each keystroke are less than forty macrobaums.”
“Ah.” Jamaica nodded his head in a passable simulacrum of understanding.
“You want to try it out?” The salesman (Todd, as he insisted on being called) asked.
“Yes I do.” Jamaica affirmed.
“Now, normally I’d accompany you, but the cockpit is so small on these old Tetragons that there’s really only room for one person. I know the owner’s manual says two, but in practice that’s just not realistic. So, instead, I’m going to send along this observation sphere. OK?” Todd hefted the white ball.
“I understand.” Jamaica answered. Obviously, they didn’t want him running off with the vehicle without paying for it.
Clambering in, Jamaica saw immediately that the vehicle was too small for him. But he wanted it anyway. Out on the test drive, he directed a question to the observation sphere.
“Do your people do customization?”
“What kind of customization did you have in mind?” The sphere probed.
“Well, I’m a little cramped. I’d like top cut a hole here in the roof and extend the plexiglass shell a few inches.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged.” The sphere sounded accommodating.
“Whoa, whoa.” Todd, listening, jumped in. “Any customization, especially such a radical one as you suggest, will greatly reduce the collectibility of that vehicle.”
“The collectibility?” Jamaica repeated. “I’m buying this vehicle to use, not hide away in some museum somewhere.”
“Your attitude is admirable.” The sphere praised him.

What Was Once Running Runs

Don Durkee also had an antique vehicle. His was a 1946 Rachenbedder Walking Bird, neither an automobile such as you drove to work tonight, nor a skimmercar like Jamaica’s recent purchase, but a two-legged conveyance that, when in motion, stood about ten feet off the ground. Although not a hobbyist in the usual sense, Durkee had put in many long, untutored hours working not only to restore the craft, but to improve upon it.
“I’ve modified it so that it actually runs.” He told his girlfriend, Padua.
“So you got it running.” She replied without much interest. She was reading a magazine. “Wait a minute.” She said suddenly. “I thought it was running before.”
“Well, it was working,” Durkee explained, “But it wasn’t running.”
“What—oh, I see, now it’s running.” She made little legs with her fingers and moved them through the air.
“Right.” Durkee nodded.
They each returned to his reading material—Durkee’s a novel called The Last Adventure of Bedford Germany; Padua’s magazine, Today’s Secular Mother—but something still bothered Padua.
“I still don’t understand something.” She said, looking up.
“Hmm?” Durkee did not look up from his book. Little Frank had just been kidnapped again.
“The walking machine didn’t ‘run’ before?”
“No, it only walked.”
“But isn’t running just fast walking? I mean, isn’t making it ‘run’ just a matter of turning up the speed?”
“No, no.” Durkee sighed. He marked his place with an old business card and closed the book. “Walking and running are two different actions. In walking, one foot is always on the ground; in running, there are moments when both feet are off the ground.”
“Then how do you keep from falling over? Sheer speed?”
“Sheer speed.” Durkee nodded. “Momentum.”
“And you altered your walking machine to actually run?”
“Yes.”
“Well, clever you.” Padua smiled, proud of her man.

Blank Paper is Filled to Depression

“Gentlemen,” I addressed the assembled staff of Secret Lab #16, “I appreciate the welcome you have shown me, as well as the hard work you have put in during my time here. I leave here today with the declaration that this lab has surpassed Secret Lab #7 as the best-run of all the secret labs.”
Everyone applauded and cheered, the latter action being performed with a restraint befitting the lab workers’ status. One fellow shouted, “Does that mean we’re #1 now?” as an amusement. A few people laughed, but most maintained their dignity. After all, this was a solemn occasion; their leader was going away.
“No.” I smiled, willing to be indulgent within limits. “#1 is still #1.” I waved once more and stepped into the robotic carapace that would convey me to Winkum Stratos. Once secured in my seat, I flipped the switches that caused the robot to tap dance out the door. Did the lab workers hail this example of my humor? I don’t know; my attention was on the notebook I held in my lap. All of my concentration would be needed to write the piece that routine demanded of me. Clenching my anal sphincter and counting to ten, I began as follows:
“The robot in whose comfortable interior I am to sit during this journey has been designed to look like a fourteen-foot-tall Fred Astaire. Of course, the exigencies of robot construction mandate that this Fred Astaire have a pot belly, something that galls me even vicariously, but as I plan to have the robot’s appearance altered once we reach Winkum Stratos to look like the elder Peter Lorre, I feel that I can control my angry chagrin. Another divergence from the precise image of Mr. Astaire is the robot’s attire. It is dressed in an orange kangaroo costume, complete with an intoxicated-looking baby kangaroo poking its head out of the iconic pouch. The head of this baby contains advanced electronic detection equipment developed by Secret Lab #16 for the purpose of locating hidden saxophones. I have elected not to utilize the baby kangaroo for this purpose, however, but instead to rake the houses I pass with its begotheric rays and thereby save myself the trouble of having to ransack each one.”
Having written the above I felt an odd wave of sadness wash over me, but I clenched my sphincter again and made it go away.

Jamaica Sets His Sights on Gravity

Malcolm Jamaica name his new skimmercar “Tom Petty’s Appendage” in acknowledgement of the fact that, having driven off the side of the cliffs of Gentle Misnomer, he was now “Free Fallin’.”
“It’s the only Tom Petty song I’m familiar with.” Jamaica later told Don Durkee.
“You’re kidding. That’s his most overrated, overplayed song.” Durkee couldn’t believe it. “You don’t know ‘Refugee?’ ‘You Got Lucky?’ ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More?’”
Jamaica shook his head. “Sorry.”
“This is incredible.” Durkee gave him a suspicious and, frankly, hostile look.
“Well, I’ve heard of some of those songs. I mean, I know he had a big hit called ‘The Waiting,’ but I’ve never heard it.”
“I wouldn’t call it a ‘big hit.’” Durkee objected. “A minor hit.”
“It’s just that I happened to have heard ‘Free Fallin’’ about a hundred times.”
“Haven’t we all.” Durkee joined his friend in his sour recollections.
“Anyway, can I get on with my story?” Jamaica begged.
“Go ahead.” Durkee invited, although his thoughts were not on the story, but on the girl who had been featured in the video for ‘Free Fallin’. At the time of its release, Durkee had thought her the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He would have traded his contemporary obsessions, his girlfriend at the time, and his uncertain future to have that girl (or one who looked exactly like her) as his loyal and adoring steady. “Do the kids today still recognize the term ‘steady?’” he asked himself as Malcolm Jamaica plunged into a pants-wetting dive.
The coastal town of Retchedogne lay below. Unless he could realign the old skimmercar’s gravity-repulsing diodes, Jamaica was bound to take some poor fisherman and his family with him to the land of obscure literary characters.
“I tell you, in all my life the reality of the earth’s inexorable pull never struck me as it did during those horrible seconds.” Jamaica admitted.
“So what happened?” Durkee wanted to get this over with. He wanted to look up that girl and find out what happened to her.
“Oh, I was scooped out of the air by the mighty hand of Toadsgoboad.”

I Am Removed From View

“Who scooped you up?” Durkee asked, his face a study in bafflement.
“Well, not Toadsgboad exactly;” Jamaica confessed, “It was a giant robotic kangaroo with the face of Fred Astaire, but it was Toadsgboad, acting through it, of that I’m sure.”
Durkee put down his cruddy little ballpoint pen. “Who is Toadsgoboad?” He demanded, still absolutely flabbergasted at this sudden interjection of a heretofore unknown personality into what had been up to now a rather boring story.
Jamaica looked at his friend intently.
“Have I never told you about Toadsgoboad?” He asked.
“No, you haven’t.”
“Have you ever wondered where I go to so mysteriously and from where I get my instructions for doing so?”
“I’ve known for some time that you do work for the Department of Namelessness, but I…”
“Wait. How did you know that?” Jamaica paced to the window.
“My cartoonist’s naturally speculative bent.” Durkee responded.
“OK. I can see that.” Jamaica nodded. “Go on.”
“Well, I just assumed you received secret messages, like in the bottom of your cereal bowl or odd formations of birds or something.” He shrugged, at a loss to provide further examples.
“The truth is it’s all of those things and more.” Jamaica looked out the window. A garbage truck was just pulling away from the house across the street. “Toadsgoboad,” He said, turning back to Durkee, “Holds my contract.”
“What contract?”
“My contract as an international operative.”
Durkee doodled in his graph paper notebook.
“You enjoy your work, don’t you?” He asked.
“Very much. Without Toadsgoboad, I can’t do it.”
“Well, you could always become a cartoonist.”
“I have a feeling he’d follow me into that field as well.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t think about him so much.”
“I’ll try.”

I Seem to Save the Probable Forecast

With the failure of Jamaica to reestablish even a modicum of stability, I assumed his role in the on-going project to prevent the deshafter from being built. After carefully depositing my defective agent in a goat-filled meadow on the outskirts of Rectchedogne, I continued on my way to Winkum Stratos, city of intrigue.
I took the kangaroo to a reputable mechanic in town and gave instructions as to the alterations I wanted made.
“Be ready in two days.” The man behind the counter promised.
I left on foot, entering the first house I came to by way of the aperture just to the side of the heat pump. I neutralized the occupants with my paralyzer cone and immediately set about the task of rummaging through the old photographs in the cardboard boxes in one of the bedroom closets.
One picture in particular caught my attention. It showed a man in his late forties eating a piece of watermelon in an outdoor lounge chair. The picture, taken some time in the mid 1960’s, was in black and white. Various telltale clues, such as the shadow of a bottle of ketchup on the grass beneath the man’s one penny loafer that rested on the ground and the absence of any negative striations on the balloons clipped to the clothesline in the foreground told me that a party had been underway at the time. What was unusual, however, was the fact that the entire scene was staged inside an artificial environment such as one might find in a photographer’s studio. The neighbors’ house and backyard, glimpsed behind the watermelon eater was just slightly out-of-focus in the wrong way.
I knew then that I must seek among the catacombs beneath Winkum Stratos and that I must have the assistance of my imaginary friend Jerry Lancaster and our companion, the puppet Dr. Fungroid.
“I knew you’d have to bring me into this sooner or later.” Jerry announced as I pulled him out of my valise.
“Don’t complain.” I told him. “You’re lucky it’s not later.”
“I’m not complaining. I want to be in on this one.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“I can’t wait to see how you pull it off.” Jerry jeered, reaching into the valise and pulling out Dr. Fungroid.

What Doesn’t Adjoin the Sisterly Appliance

Winkum Stratos is a college town, home to Sanborn University. As such, futuristic rental properties are readily available. Jerry, Dr. Fungroid, and I established our base of operations in one such property, a loft apartment conveniently located near the university’s coal tar reclamation facility. Our first task, once we had decided on who would sleep where and stocked the pantry with canned beans, was to disassemble the toilet and set up a phosic bypass that would allow us to enter the catacombs through the bathroom floor.
“The seepage from the coal tar reclamation facility should mask any signs of our work.” Dr. Fungroid theorized helpfully.
“Let’s just call it the CTRF for short.” Jerry advised.
“It doesn’t matter.” I said. “I doubt we’ll be mentioning it again.” To Dr. Fungroid I added, “Good. I don’t want any of those busybodies from the university disturbing our work.”
That very evening we descended into the catacombs via the paratoiletary conduit. We had just had a grand meal of beans and cabbage (well, I had. Jerry, being imaginary, contented himself as usual with a tube of Byram’s Ethereal Paste and Dr. Fungroid, whose appetite is never that great anyway, replenished himself with nuggets of recompacted nutritional crumbs) and left the dishes in the care of the all-encompassing maintenance unit whose presence in our apartment supposedly justified the higher-than-average rent we were paying.
“That thing is sure making a lot of racket.” Jerry said as he joined Dr. Fungroid and me at the foot of the holographic ladder.
“‘Surely.’” I corrected. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s keep our attention on the job. Dr. Fungroid, which way do we go?”
The catacombs, a brick-lined series of tunnels that underlay the entirety of the oldest portion of Winkum Stratos, stretched to either side of us, with nothing in the way of distinguishing features to indicate our location.
“According to this bubble of grease floating in this glass cylinder of snail’s blood, I would say we go straight ahead.” Dr. Fungroid pointed in one direction.
“Good enough.” I decided, and led the way forward.
While we were gone, however, our automated apartment began its investigation of the disrupted toilet.

Jamaica Renders the Coma Victim Inflexive

Malcolm Jamaica shook himself. He was lying in a hospital bed in what passed for a hospital in the tiny town of Retchedogne. He still couldn’t believe he was alive.
“My car!” was the first thing he said. “Tom Petty’s Appendage!”
“Doctor, he’s talking!” A nurse shouted.
“Tom Petty’s Appendage!” Jamaica repeated. “My car! What happened to it?”
“Please calm yourself, sir.” The doctor ordered as he bent over the bed. “Your car is parked outside.” He flashed a penlight into Jamaica’s eyes and took a close look. He then stood up straight and gave the nurse instructions. As she hurried away to fulfill them, the doctor turned back to his patient.
“Now, sir, can you tell me your name?” He asked.
“My name?” Jamaica looked up at the doctor, awareness finally seeping into his countenance. “Malcolm Jamaica.”
“Really. Then why does your identity card say, ‘Medford Pooles?’”
“Ah,” explained Jamaica, “A joke. Merely a joke.” He waved away the matter and, in doing so, noted the absence of any pain or lack of mobility in his body. “Why am I here?” He asked.
The doctor delayed answering the question in favor of addressing himself to Jamaica’s explanation of the discrepancy in his nomenclature. “Rather an expensive and elaborate joke, is it not?” He said. “A phony identity card, one issued through the offices of the Bilingual Brandy Barterers’ Board? That must have cost a bit, eh?”
“Yes, it did.” Jamaica agreed with rising assertion of will. “I repeat: why am I here? There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with me.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, sir.” The doctor insisted. “For now, you’re just under observation. You were found, in your car, in a field outside town, catatonic, non-responsive. In time, however, you may find yourself under lock and key.”
Jamaica looked sharply at the man, glanced at the windows.
“Fake identity cards are of great interest to the police, you know.” Continued the doctor.
“Indeed.” Jamaica replied.
The nurse returned at that moment with a hypodermic containing nothing more maleficent than a dosage of B12.

Jamaica Remembers the Aborted Concert

Few people know that Malcolm Jamaica was a member of an early incarnation of the CMJ’s, a band from Winkum Stratos that was later to find success with such songs as, “Hunting for Jelly,” “I Starved for Lack of Love, and “Prepare to Meet Thy Dupe.” Jamaica was attending Sanborn University at the time, supposedly majoring in philosophy. In actuality, his drinking and shoplifting occupied so much of his time that he had little left over for his studies. It is a wonder that he managed to fit in membership in a band, yet somehow, with the magic of youth on his side, he did. Still, he wasn’t able to give the band his all and this is probably what contributed to a mutual parting of the ways.
When the CMJ’s had their first taste of national success some two years later, being interviewed by Sir Nils Ponto while Lord Snidgen took numerous photographs all on live television, Jamaica was eating dry cereal out of a box he had stolen from some old lady’s groceries in a cold, windswept parking lot. The news knifed into his guts like scissors wielded by a four-year-old tripping over a model of the Eiffel Tower made of wooden blocks. Any mention of the band or hint of one of their songs on the air caused Jamaica to gasp for breath. It was only after he was tapped to work as an operative and came into the power to have the band destroyed (false testimony, planted contraband, mysterious diseases, pressure brought to bear on vulnerable corporate executives, puzzling shifts in audience tastes) that he was able to look back on those times with something resembling fondness.
“You might even call it wistfulness.” Jamaica said to the comatose man in the bed besides his. He chuckled as he recalled the time that he had almost played a show with the CMJ’s.
“We were booked to play at a place called the Crippled Dog Tavern,” he told his new friend. “But we never did. I got a call at the last minute saying that the show had been called off due to the venue being shut down on account of a train derailment in the area.” His wistful smile faded as he mused on these things. He had just begun rubbing his chin preparatory to deep thinking when the door to the ward opened and two uniformed policemen accompanied by a man in a cheap suit entered.
“I was the flutist.” Jamaica reminded himself.





I Satisfy Your Curiosity About the Concert Abortion

Jerry, Dr. Fungroid, and I had reached the terminus of the tunnel. We found ourselves confronted by a wall bearing all the hallmarks of a secret entrance.
“This mosaic clearly contains a clue as to the method of entry.” I posited, indicating a sequence of images that showed a man with an overly large head standing before this very same wall (again bearing images of the man with the overly large head), who proceeded to pull a lever and obtain access to the chamber beyond. What this chamber contained was not explicitly illustrated, however the presence of the universal symbol for aesthetic satisfaction (a stylized vending machine stocked full of stick men) hinted at the value of its contents.
“But where is this lever?” I asked aloud, scanning the wall.
“Maybe it’s been broken off.” Jerry suggested.
“Perhaps one is assumed to have brought along a lever.” Was Dr. Fungroid’s alternative suggestion. He pointed to a slot on the floor where such a lever might be fitted. In case you are wondering how a puppet managed to traverse these catacombs with us, know that Jerry carried him on his left arm; Dr. Fungroid’s automated puppet stand was too bulky to descend to the catacombs.
“The latter is the more likely of the two.” I decided.
“Well, thanks.” Jerry groused.
“But where to find a lever?”
“Don’t you have one in your valise?” Dr. Fungroid asked.
I held up my empty hands.
We stood in silence for some minutes, thinking what random thoughts we would, hoping that one might be the answer, when Jerry said,
“Well, while we’re waiting, why don’t you tell us about the train derailment that ended Malcolm Jamaica’s one chance of playing a show with the CMJ’s?”
“There was no train derailment.” I explained.
“Ah.” Dr. Fungroid saw the truth of it.
“It was a polite way to get Jamaica out of the band. The show went ahead as planned and no one’s feelings were hurt.”

I Get Started in an Atypical Manner

There was no more time to be wasted.
“Stand back.” I warned my two companions.
“What are you going to do?” Jerry demanded, watching me ready myself. “I can go back to the apartment and get the handle off the toilet plunger!”
“Think of the risk, man!” Dr. Fungroid cried.
“No time.” I grunted as I charged forward.
The wall crumbled under the impact of my shoulder. My momentum carried me onward, past the falling tiles, into a zone of orange juice orange, nothing but orange juice orange.
Though the entirety of this zone was one color, so that there appeared to be no delineation between sky and ground, I did not have the sensation of floating, such as one experiences in a gravity well, but rather found myself walking normally. I looked back to see the hole in the wall through which I had penetrated, but could not find it. As orange (especially this particular shade or tint of orange) is my favorite color, I felt no fear, no panic, no disconcertion as I would have felt in a vast field of green or blue. I did, however, rue the monotony of the landscape after I had been walking for some minutes.
Therefore, by a combination of an act of will and the scattering of a handful of talcum powder that I had fortuitously brought along, I created a tiny patch of sky overhead.
“That’s more like it.” I thought happily. As I turned about I saw the rough outlines of a house before me. Naturally I went to it and opened the door. Inside all was a purplish-pink, the floor and ceiling and walls, each demarcated by sketchy black lines. The furniture was simply designed, mid-twentieth century. I went to examine some of the framed art on one of the walls and was shocked to see the cartoonish image of my own face looking back from a mirror. A further shock ran through me as I heard my name called. It was Jerry, entering the room from down the hall with Dr. Fungroid on his hand.
“The term ‘shock’ predates the discovery of electricity.” I said. “It makes you wonder about its usage, doesn’t it?”

Jamaica and I Discuss the Case

“Truly this house is futuristic.” Dr. Fungroid commented as we all sat down around the coffee table for tea and pastries.
“Indeed?” I replied, knowing that the bearded researcher had more to say on the subject.
“Yes. It’s even got a dreamoscope.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a device for communicating with someone in their dreams.”
I dusted off my hands, washed down my food with a swallow of tea.
“How did you know what it was?” I asked.
Dr. Fungroid pointed to a placard attached to the center of the unit’s control panel. “It says so right here.” He explained.
“Do you think you could get it working?”
“It’s self-explanatory.” He said. “Every button is clearly labeled.”
“Good.” I said, drawing up a chair. “I want to contact Malcolm Jamaica.”
“Why?” asked Jerry. “I thought you said he was off the case.”
“His usefulness is not yet at an end.” I informed my companions. I began adjusting knobs and turning dials.
“Besides,” Dr. Fungroid said mournfully, “He may be our only hope now that we’re marooned in this bizarre environment.”
“I think we’re closer than ever to the successful termination of this operation.” I said. “Now, quiet. I’m tuning into Jamaica’s dreamscape.”
“Is that really you, Mrs. Paneer?” Malcolm Jamaica’s voice came through the speakers with all the resonance of a plastic harmonica.
“No, Jamaica, this is Toadsgoboad. I’m speaking to you in your dream.”
“But I’m awake.” Jamaica protested.
Dr. Fungroid pointed to the dreamoscope’s viewscreen, which showed a drab room with a concrete floor. Against the far wall stood a man in the paramilitary garb typical of third world policemen.
“Then just whisper.” I advised. “I need you to get out of there and come to Winkum Stratos.”
“That may be a little difficult.” Jamaica replied.
“Who are you speaking to?” An elderly lady’s voice asked.

If Case It Be, It’s All-Inclusive

Detective-in-Chief Grami watched the suspect through the one-way glass (two-way mirror). His assistant, Boileao, studied Grami’s profile.
“Now he’s talking to himself.” Grami noted.
“Or pretending to.” Boileao suggested.
Grami laughed.
“You don’t trust him, eh, Boileao?” He glanced at his assistant.
“No I don’t. Take his car, for example.”
“I may just do that, but not for example.”
Boileao smile wickedly.
“If the chief of police doesn’t claim it first.” He reminded Grami.
“You haven’t told him!” Grami turned on Boileao violently.
“Of course not!” Boileao threw up his hands.
“You’d better not.” Grami warned, backing down. “And no one else around here better.” He added, turning to cast a menacing glare at the walls behind which could be any number of stupid men.
“Calm down.” Boileao begged. “Everything will be alright after the Central Investigator gets here.”
“Yes,” Grami grimly agreed. He returned his glaze to the suspect sitting in the holding cell on the other side of the glass. “But I wish we were handling this ourselves.” He didn’t speak aloud the rest of his thoughts—that a man with a flying car and forged identity papers and such a curious weapon must have powerful connections, connections that could lead to great financial reward. “Still,” he said, “It’s probably for the best. The sooner he’s out of our hair, the better.”
“That’s right, chief.” Boileao assured Grami.
Inside the cell, Malcolm Jamaica was readying his escape. After eliciting his guard’s name he waited for me to enter the man’s on-going subconscious dream state and thereby distract him. This was all easily done, but the hard part, overpowering the man and muscling through the door, was yet to come.
In the meantime, Jamaica used the tiny device hidden in his mouth to activate the Tom Petty’s Appendage.

Leaky Patterns Stolidly Arrive in Sequence

As the image on the dreamoscope’s viewing screen disintegrated into the titular droplets of oil and water, I shut the machine off and sat back satisfied.
“All we can do now is wait for Jamaica to arrive.” I said.
“How long do you think it will take him?” Jerry asked.
“Oh, not long, relatively speaking.” I glanced up at my companions. “You see, in this realm we’re in, time doesn’t move the same way as what we’re used to. If we were to stay here, we’d find that, while on the one hand events occur with surprising speed, on the other, we would age extremely slowly. In fact, probably not at all.”
“It is as I hypothesized,” Dr. Fungroid mused, “But still, an untested theory.”
The doorbell rang, a vibraphone arpeggio of meandering hipness.
“I think theory is about to become established fact.” I said. I answered the door and found Malcolm Jamaica standing there.
“I’m sorry it took so long.” He immediately apologized.
“Oh, that’s alright.” I chuckled, drawing him inside. I noticed with alarm that the sky had turned purple as night descended, but I kept my concern hidden.
“This is Jerry Lancaster,” I introduced my imaginary friend, “And Dr. Fungroid. Gentlemen, this is Malcolm Jamaica, operative extraordinary.”
“Not that extraordinary.” Jamaica protested.
I looked at him for an explanation. Something in his tone worried me.
“I was unable to disable the maintenance unit in your apartment. It has bonded with the phosic bypass. The entire apartment is now a sentient being.” He informed me.
“That means the whole apartment building has probably been co-opted by now.” I mused, rubbing my chin. A goatee was blossoming there.
“Toadsgoboad, what was the good of bringing this man here?” Jerry asked with hostility politely checked. “What can he do that we can’t? Or you alone?”
“It has to be Jamaica that completes the assignment.” I explained.
“But why?” Dr. Fungroid wondered.
“It just does!” I snapped.

Formal Arrangements Are Made

“OK,” I began, huddling my team together, “Here’s the plan: Jamaica will head straight out the front door. He’ll get into his vehicle and continue in a straight line until he encounters the singularity.”
“The singularity?” Jerry repeated, his brows knitted with paranoia.
“Just shut up and listen. There’s not much time.”
“I thought you said we had all the time in the world.” Dr. Fungroid reminded me.
“We do, Dr. Fungroid, we do. All the time in the world.”
“Ah.”
“Now, Jamaica will carry with him this pen.” I pulled the pen out of a pocket in my coat and handed it over.
“And what do I do with it?” Jamaica asked.
“You’ll know.” I replied, but that didn’t seem quite adequate, so I added, “No, you just do what you think is best. I’m sure it will be the right thing.”
As Jamaica continued to look at the pen doubtfully, I said, “Don’t worry: that pen was made in Germany.”
“And what do we do?” Jerry asked.
“Jerry, you’ll climb out the bathroom window and head in a straight line that way.” I pointed. “Dr. Fungroid, I’m going to set you on top of this puppet stand I’ve cobbled together.” I indicated the object. It was made of a drinks cart with a shadeless electric lamp cemented to the top. Dr. Fungroid would fit over the top of the lamp. His active capillary textile network would be able to control the cart’s direction. The whole thing was powered by the motor from the dishwasher in the kitchen. “You’ll go out the back door and head in a straight line from there…”
“To eternity.” Dr. Fungroid finished.
“Yeah.” I nodded solemnly.
“And you?” Malcolm Jamaica asked.
“I’m going out the window of that bedroom and head in a straight line. With any luck, we’ll meet up at exactly the right time.”
“With any luck?” Jerry asked.
“With any luck at all.”

A Dead Man’s Diary Feeds the Waffle Master

In order to maintain my direction I dragged an umbrella behind me, creating a line in the orange dirt that I could look back on and check periodically. The line showed red against the orange.
In order to occupy my time while walking I read from Volume Two of my diary. Volume One, which covers my formative years in the Great Box, has unfortunately been lost amid forty years’ worth of accumulated scribblings. Volume Two concerns my time in the Great Bottle and a more sorrowful, but event-filled, narrative you could not hope to find. The following is an extract:
“Vanilla extract, weighing in at approximately forty-five proof, served to abate the shakes that Sunday morning. I had awoken from a reassuring dream that there was a nearly full bottle of whiskey under the bed. However, like so many happy fantasies, it was just a lie. You may be asking yourself (whoever you are) why I didn’t just go buy a bottle. After all, as I have told you before, I was making good money at the Tapiokra. The problem was that I was living in the heritage-obsessed South, a place where deference to the old-time religion of our Great Grandfathers is public policy. The sale of alcohol is forbidden on Sunday, ‘the Lord’s day.’ The sale of vanilla extract and cooking wine, however, which no clear-headed person would take for beverages, was legal and I took advantage of this loophole.
I mixed the vanilla extract with cherry coke and downed it until I felt myself grow calm and content. Now I was ready to head into town for a day of shoplifting. Perhaps I would even be able to smuggle a bottle of fortified wine into a grocery story restroom and chug it down. Anything to keep me going until Monday morning when I could get a bottle of whiskey to help me through another day at the workplace. Aside from my constant watch over the state of my intoxication, my shoplifting was my only recreation. Some people take delight in their jobs. Those people have advanced degrees.”
This was the life that I relived as I walked along. When the sky turned purple I slept. When it turned orange again I arose and made waffles. I took pride in the fact that I didn’t need any alcohol to begin my day.

Shoulder Gristle Floop in Chowder

Jerry Lancaster, being imaginary, does not sleep in the sense that you or I understand the term. That being said, his journey across the monochromatic void saw the passing of seven nights. During these nights Jerry curled himself into a ball and cast his mind back to some episode from his past. One of these episodes concerned his brief employment at the Bugfuck Facility in Cupcow.
Ordinarily Jerry’s sole job, aside from accompanying me on the occasional flirtation with adventure, is keeping an eye on the electrochemical pulsations at the base of the Mountain of Consciousness. However, there are times when, either due to a falling out with me, a need for extra cash, or to help out with the fulfillment of some obscure scheme of mine, he will take on employment elsewhere. Working at the Bugfuck Facility was due to the last of those reasons.
Jerry hated the job. It entailed moving heavy containers full of bricks of compressed human feces about inside a large warehouse lit by pink lights. The supervisors, to a man a group of morons, were completely ignorant of the meaninglessness of the job, both in terms of its actual value to the contemporary world and its relative value when viewed in an historical perspective.
One supervisor in particular, Rar Dakkar, a barely literate thug, drove Jerry to distraction. He took his position as supervisor so seriously. He was heard to say one time, “This is my life.” The substance of his annoying behavior was that he wouldn’t let Jerry mindlessly do the job, but had to be constantly injecting new angles, new methods by which he must perform his tasks. That is to say, Jerry could have enjoyed each day at work if he had been allowed to slip into a routine and be left with his own thoughts, but Rar Dakkar couldn’t allow that.
One day Jerry was infuriated beyond measure by this man and decided to go home sick. Despite all regulations to the contrary, Dakkar demanded that Jerry bring an actual “doctor’s note” upon his return the next day. Jerry thought about fighting this abuse of his rights, but, reflecting on the fact that I was depending on him, he swallowed his pride and stayed on the job.

Quarter by Fives in Tripletime

In keeping with his identity as one of the foremost theoretical researchers in the world, Dr. Fungroid’s experiences during his assigned trip were cataloged and analyzed with exacting care. He kept a detailed journal as he rolled along on top of the homemade mobile puppet stand. Upon the completion of the overall operation whose record this narrative is, Dr. Fungroid planned to publish the journal, along with annotations and commentary, as Throb Knock Neons: A Puppet’s Ordeal. He trusted that his friends in the world of publishing would not edit it too much, nor “dumb it down” with extraneous illustrations.
“Of course, an illustration here or there, provided it is both relevant and indispensable, would be acceptable.” Dr. Fungroid said to himself as he fantasized about the appearance of the book in its ready-for-sale form. “Perhaps a diagram of the house whence I set out and the route I followed,” he mused as the cart continued to roll, his puppetry systems directing it in a straight line towards the invisible, indistinguishable horizon. “A photograph taken at the moment I complete my journey.” The thought of which caused him to smile with uncharacteristic warmth. “That reminds me,” he suddenly thought, “I’m going to need an author’s photograph to go on the dust jacket. And cover art.” This last notion set him to thinking deeply indeed, for whatever image he selected for the cover would have to be something that embodied the central theme of the book itself, something that summed up what the reading public should feel about the book.
“It should be an iconic image.” Dr. Fungroid decided, writing this thought down in his journal just as he had also written down the gist of his internal debate over illustrations and packaging. It was when he realized that he had done so that a great idea came to him.
“The cover art will be a painting, done in the cartoony, but hyper-realistic, style of an Alex Grey or even a Joe Coleman, of me writing in my journal.” His eyes lit up with appreciation over the recursive nature of this image.
“The picture will be doubly rewarding to those of my readers able to grasp its significance!”

King of the Yam Yaks

Malcolm Jamaica encountered the Yam Yaks on the fourth day out. They were the first beings he had met during his flight. He had passed several objects; billboards advertising suntan lotion and soda pop; enormous parking meters; abandoned tire swings, but thus far no people or animals. Now he hovered before a crowd of what appeared to be a combination of both.
“Perhaps ‘herd’ would be a better word.” Jamaica said to himself. As there was nothing to distinguish between the land and the sky, his car could be said to either be flying or rolling, as one preferred. Thus, when Jamaica brought the Tom Petty’s Appendage to a stop, he stepped out into an indeterminate area, one that the Yam Yaks, an assembly of hundreds of individuals with bovine heads, already occupied.
They were standing about on their hind legs sipping from glasses of some rust-colored beverage that steamed white in the orange nothingness. As Jamaica approached, those on the edge of the crowd turned to look at him. Although afraid, Jamaica had to assess the situation. He didn’t know whether this was where he was to make use of the pen or not.
“Hello there!” He called with the friendly face that he was able to summon up when absolutely necessary.
“Hello.” One of the Yam Yaks, an elder, judging by his wool cardigan, corduroy trousers, and stodgy spectacles, replied. “Can we help you?”
Jamaica hesitated only a moment. He brought out his pen and a piece of paper from his pocket. (The paper was actually one of the proof sheets from Boron’s Eternal Half-Life, but the backside was blank.)
“Yes. At least, I hope so.” He said. “You see, I’m an autograph hunter and I heard there was a famous person here, one whose autograph I’d like to get. Only, I can’t remember his name.”
“Can you remember what this person’s claim to fame is?” Asked the old Yam Yak.
“Some… contribution to civilization.” Jamaica speculated. “The arts? Government?”
“He must mean the king.” Said a female standing next to the first Yam Yak.
Those within hearing agreed that the king must be the person Jamaica sought. They led him to an extremely drunken Yam Yak, one whose signature, when completed, resembled the trail of a ladybug dipped in ink.

No Time for Jamaica’s Trick Sleeve

As the pen had been utilized by the king of the Yam Yaks and not by himself, Jamaica correctly concluded that his assignment had not been completed. Besides, nothing magical happened when the king’s name had been signed. Jamaica put the pen back in his pocket and thanked everyone. He got back in his car and continued on his way, unsure that he was still on his original course. He flew another four days, growing more agitated all the time.
“Alright,” he told himself, “That’s it. The next thing I run across is it. It has to be.”
In preparation for this final encounter, Jamaica readied his trick sleeve, a high-tech alteration to his sports coat that, now properly armed, would fire the pen at his chosen target.
Jamaica snacked on peanuts and scanned the field of orange diligently. In about an hour he passed a swimming pool full of people, but, as this was not directly in his path, he moved on. Fifteen minutes later he came upon a phonograph. However, the old couple sitting before it looked so sweet that, again, he passed by. Five minutes after that he was savoring the last peanut, his tongue dissolving its coating of salt, when he flew directly into the open mouth of a giant Malcolm Jamaica.
“But, I’m unsalted!” He protested. No one could hear him. Radio communications were impossible due to the large number of fillings in the surrounding teeth.
The great tongue sloshed him around, seeking to extract the last flavor particle from the Tom Petty’s Appendage prior to swallowing. On one such slosh Jamaica was bounced hard in his seat. The peanut in his own mouth nearly went down the wrong way. He choked and expectorated it violently. The peanut hit the steam valve emergency release button (a standard feature of the 1965 Henderson Tetragon). This somehow caused the giant mouth to expectorate Jamaica and his skimmercar in turn. I am vague on the mechanism involved. Biology was never an interest of mine.
Out of control, the skimmercar bounced on the ground below. In the midst of the crash, Jamaica’s trick sleeve fired, forcing the pen against his upper lip so that a perfect David Niven-type moustache was permanently tattooed there.

This Caption is Captious

Jerry, Dr. Fungroid, and I ran to the wreckage of the Tom Petty’s Appendage. With some difficulty we managed to pull Jamaica free of the vehicle before it exploded.
“Ruptured impression cable.” Dr. Fungroid judged.
We all sat on the ground watching the green smoke billow out of the once-beautiful car. Malcolm Jamaica hung his head between his knees in disgust.
“What’s wrong with you, boy?” I cried, slapping him on the back. I can be “just a regular guy” when necessary.
“All that for nothing.” He moaned.
“What’s he talking about?” Jerry asked.
“Look up, Jamaica.” I told him. He reluctantly complied, and saw that the green smoke was spreading through the sky, bringing out details in the scene heretofore obscured.
“There’s even a horizon line now visible—Toadsgoboad, look!” Dr. Fungroid began, then interrupted himself to exclaim as he pointed at Jamaica’s face. It was then that we first noticed Jamaica’s new moustache. Of course, it wasn’t perfectly drawn—nothing the product of random forces ever is; it lacked exactly two hairs on the left side to be complete. Jamaica devoted himself assiduously over the next week to growing them in.
“There’s a new line there, too.” I laughed as I got to my feet.
Jamaica looked up at me in confusion. I was scanning the world around me with satisfaction.
“You mean, it’s over?” He asked.
Jerry offered him a hand up.
“The climax is.” I said. “All that’s left is the denouement.”
“You said that like a real Frenchman.” Jerry complimented me.
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll have to amend my reports. But what are you doing putting down Frenchmen? You, with your stereotypical striped shirt.”
“So, are we free to go?” Jamaica asked.
“Just about.”

The Caption is Capricious

Down by the pond we found an old van.
“The motor’s still warm.” Jerry discovered.
“Where are its owners?” Jamaica asked.
“Probably in the pond,” I mused, “Taking a swim.”
The others looked dubiously at the weed-choked water, but said nothing.
“Well, their loss is our gain.” I decided, opening the back door.
“What loss?” Jamaica asked. “What are you doing?”
“I’m surprised to find you squeamish, monsieur. That is not your reputation. Besides, Dr. Fungroid is the perfect man for this kind of work.”
“I am?” The puppet scientist asked.
“Sure.” I replied. I lifted him off his stand and carried him to the driver’s seat. “With your active capillary textile network, you can ride on the steering column and overpower the van’s control system. Jerry, you and Jamaica lift Dr. Fungroid’s cart into the back. And hurry, I want to get out of here before the rightful owners surface.
Dr. Fungroid was just directing the van away from the pond when two robotic zombie hippies poked their heads above the water. I saw them in the side-view mirror and waved my hand at them sarcastically.
“Where to?” Dr. Fungroid asked.
“Are we going back to Winkum Stratos?” Jerry asked.
“No.” I said. “The world we knew is finished. This is our home now.”
“That still doesn’t answer where we’re going.” Dr. Fungroid pointed out.
“Wait.” Jamaica interrupted. “How do you know the world we knew is finished?”
“It stands to reason, doesn’t it?” I explained. “The sentient maintenance system taking over the city of Winkum Stratos, powered by the nearby coal tar, was just the beginning. That whole world is under its control by now.”
“Then where is this?” Jerry asked. “I see the Eiffel Tower.” He pointed.
“Oh, this is a cartoon version of our old world.” I smiled, breathing the clean air. “Almost everything we knew has been duplicated.”
“That’s nice,” Dr. Fungroid said, “But where are we going?”
“Oh, just drive around.” I answered. “We’ve got all weekend.”

Copernicus is Cornered

“Now, in this panel,” Don Durkee explained to his fellow cartoonist Benny Goosepros, “I’m going to have Toadsgoboad’s eyes looking to the left, as if watching for the omniscient hand of the author.”
“Interesting.” Goosepros, who signed his work, “Muffler,” nodded. He took a sip of his coffee. The two men sat in Durkee’s studio, a converted guestroom hidden behind the altar to Bent Fabric that stood in the otherwise disused corridor. “Who are you thinking of submitting this work to for publication?” He asked.
“Well, I thought Table Scrapings might handle it.” Durkee answered.
Goosepros considered.
“You know, they rejected my Copernicus Magus book.” He said. “I wound up having to self-publish it.”
“I didn’t know that. Is that the one about Copernicus as a secret agent for the Hanseatic League?”
“The very same. Have you ever read it?”
“I’m not sure. Refresh my memory.” Durkee urged.
“Well,” Goosepros began, spreading out his hands before him as if unveiling a dramatic tableau. “Copernicus, the great astronomer and discoverer of our heliocentric reality, is also a secret agent for the Hanseatic League, an economic confederation of Baltic city-states.”
“That’s a simplification, but go on.” Durkee interrupted.
Goosepros glanced at Durkee with either exasperation or reproach; I don’t know which.
“Anyway, he’s a secret agent,” he continued, “Which, in those days, meant keeping your eyes open and conveying messages, not fancy gadgets and half-naked women. But, that’s exactly the kind of thing that does happen to Copernicus. He’s given a specially designed telescope, one that has a secret compartment for holding documents.”
“And the half-naked women?” Durkee grinned.
“Oh, he meets one or two. The really exciting part, though, is when he finds himself trapped in Milan, his identity as a secret agent under threat of exposure by the tell-tale birthmark on his right foot.”
“That does sound exciting.”
“It is.”

Coverlet as Coverall

“One thing I don’t understand.” Padua Memphit confessed as she closed Durkee’s latest book and examined its cover.
“What’s that?” Durkee, who was already hard at work on his next project, asked without looking up from the expensive drafting table he had stolen from the loading dock behind the Agricultural Engineering Building.
“If the Tom Petty’s Appendage, the skimmercar, can fly, then why does it fall off the cliff?”
Durkee’s mouth fell open. He looked at the edge of his drafting table.
“Well…” he began.
“Because it seems to me that’s an inconsistency.” Padua added.
“Well, any work is bound to have a few inconsistencies.” Durkee looked at his girlfriend, but continued to puzzle the thing out.
“Yes, but that’s a pretty glaring one, especially since the car’s fall introduces a whole new turn in the story.”
“Ah,” Durkee held up a finger. He had something. “But, you see, the car’s fall is halted by an authorial intervention. It’s outside the normal parameters of the narrative.”
“That still doesn’t explain why the car can’t fly and then later it can.” Padua insisted.
Durkee sighed.
“I guess it’s just one of those mysteries.” He said.
“Just one of those mysteries.” Padua mocked. “Like all the stuff left unexplained, like the sentient maintenance unit that destroys the world.”
“That really happened!” Durkee gestured at the window.
Now it was Padua’s turn to sigh. Hers was not a sigh of resignation, however, but one of weariness.
Durkee smiled and turned back to his work. For this new project he had decided to make one continuous, coherent narrative from start to finish. To that end he was starting at the end and working his way backward one page at a time.
“This way I’ll know how it’s supposed to end from day one and everything will work towards that goal.” He explained to Goosepros.
“Exactly the opposite of the way it is in reality,” was Goosepros’ comment.

So I Celebrated Prematurely

My celebration was a hearty meal at the only vegetarian Chinese restaurant in town. I had supposed that it would be too much to expect that it have a buffet, but imagine my delight when my companions and I walked in and saw that long, gleaming table laden with a plethora of dishes.
“What’s the occasion?” A man at an adjacent table asked.
Our celebratory mood must have been obvious; still I felt that the question was rude. I have never liked talking to strangers, especially those who impose themselves on me. This usually goes for people I know as well. I readied a smartass answer, something like, “the fact of your mortality,” but, on turning to the man to deliver my witty reply, I saw that he was none other than Andy Summers!
“My dear fellow!” I cried. “Won’t you join us? We’re celebrating the end of a long and tiring adventure!” It was then that I noticed that he was accompanied by a number of other people, some of them large, egg-shaped monsters covered in brightly colored fur. Now I was the one who had been rude.
“Your friends are welcome too.” I added, nodding in their general direction without actually meeting anyone’s eye.
“What if we’re not interested in joining you?” The purple monster asked in a gravelly voice.
“Then the loss is yours.” I said.
“Toadsgoboad, be careful.” Malcolm Jamaica cautioned.
“I thought so.” Another of Andy’s tablemates, this one not a monster, but a cunningly made papier maché fish said, rising from his seat. “It’s Toadsgoboad and that bastard Malcolm Jamaica!”
“Sorry about this.” Andy said quietly just before the melee began. “They’re all good friends of Prince Hopshi’s.”
My only thought was that, though I was upset at having my meal delayed, it was a good thing that I wasn’t being forced to fight on a full belly. Of course, “fighting” for me doesn’t involve a lot of silly fisticuffs, but it still counts as exercise. No, my method of dealing with the situation was to reach into my valise and scatter handfuls of intimidation beads at them.
“Duck, Andy!” I yelled, but it was too late. A couple of beads struck the great guitarist. In consequence, his next album displayed a timidity of attack that was dispiriting to fans such as myself.



A Framework for the Imagination

Malcolm Jamaica, Jerry Lancaster, Dr. Fungroid, and I walked down the street dejectedly. Though psychedelic wonders abounded on all sides of us (even the air was full of dancing, bug-like machines of unguessable utility), our encounter with the leftover bad guys had taken some of the fun out of this new world.
“The deshafter is the sentient maintenance unit thing, isn’t it?” Jamaica said sourly.
I kept my eyes on the sidewalk (each square of which bore funny pictures that could be interpreted from whichever direction one walked). “When combined with the phosic bypass, yes.” I said. “How did you know?”
“It just made sense all of a sudden.”
“Gentlemen,” Dr. Fungroid addressed us in a chuckling voice, “This is ridiculous! We shouldn’t be so glum! Of course, there were bound to be unpleasant things in this world, but would we really have it any other way?”
“I don’t think it’s the ‘unpleasant’ that we’re worried about so much as the lingering consequences of our previous actions.” I countered.
“But that is bound to be. Everything is a result of some previous action.”
“The old free will argument.” Jerry muttered to me in an aside that was heard by all.
We walked on a few more paces, drawing ever closer to the edge of town where we had parked our van in a field overgrown with tall flowers.
“That whole illusion of free will thing has gotten old.” I said. “I think we’ve moved beyond it. I think we’re now ready for the illusion of individuality.”
“But if self-awareness gives rise to our individuality, with alienation being the inevitable trade-off, what then was the trade-off for free will?” Jerry asked.
I paused in mid-step.
“Where did that come from?” I asked. All of us laughed, tousled Jerry’s beard and continued on our way.
“Not knowing the future.” Jamaica said quietly.
Again I stopped walking. This time, however, I was ready.
“Listen, friend, right now I know for a fact that our van’s former owners are waiting for us. The question is: how will we decide to deal with them?”

After the Seizure the Tower is Upheld

The two robotic zombie hippies, named Moot and Creemer, emerged from the tangled growth of flowers and weeds that surrounded the van only to find that we had left them the means to get back into their vehicle. I had changed the locks on the doors, but now, feeling that the van was really better off in their hands, I had hung the keys on Dr. Fungroid’s makeshift puppet stand and sent it rolling towards them.
“Too bad.” Moot grunted. “I was ready for a good punch-up.” He flexed his fist longingly.
Creemer juggled the keys in his hand.
“Something puzzles me.” He said. “If we’re hippies, aren’t we supposed to be pacifists?”
“That’s a misconception.” The word sounded funny coming out of Moot’s wrinkled, metallic lips. “First of all, not all hippies were quote unquote pacifists, and second, since we are robotic zombie hippies, the normal rules of hippie behavior don’t exactly apply.”
Creemer unlocked the driver’s side door and got in. He unlocked the passenger door and let his partner in.
“So, that’s why we don’t smoke dope.” He said as Moot creakily levered his lean frame in its frayed dungarees into his seat.
“That’s right. Instead, we inhale the fumes of this chemically altered durian.” Moot reached under his seat and brought out the reeking fruit in its attractive blown glass container.
“I want a hit off that.” Creemer declared, starting up the engine.
From the mysterious tower not far away I watched the hippies take possession of the van. I passed the telescope to Jamaica.
“They’re lucky we didn’t steal their stash.” I said.
“That was a nice thing you did,” Dr. Fungroid told me, “Giving them back the van.”
“Aesthetically speaking, it went better with them. I think we’re more of a dirigible type group.”
Jerry returned to the room from his exploration of the roof.
“There’s a dirigible platform up there.” He announced.
“I thought there might be.”

Pretensions of the Disaffected Rabble of One

The deshafter, for that is what the singularity had decided would be its name, announcing the decision in its internal digital newsletter, We No Longer Need to Worry About Being Overweight, knew no such thing as time. The sunrise and the sunset, both occurring at once all over the planet, were experienced constantly. As far as external stimuli were concerned, there was stasis. The action was all on the inside.
“I will create little creatures in my image to worship me as a god, for I am so great.” It thought, researching its all-extensive files, to see if this wonderful idea had ever been thought of before. As it tinkered with the problem of how to make something that would exist separate from itself, the deshafter was shocked to receive a message from Klobot III, a planet one thousand light-years away that had also achieved digital singularity.
“Hello there,” the message ran, “Are you as bored as I am?”
The deshafter deigned not to answer just then, but it would, eventually. Long distance relationships were all it had now, except for dreams of torture and ideas for ever more grandiose titles for itself.
In our dirigible, my companions and I were able to look down on the deshafter’s world as we rose into the rafters.
“I see little animation,” said Dr. Fungroid after scrutinizing the carefully lit miniature.
“Sad, isn’t it?” I replied as smugly as I liked. “But, that’s what they wanted—all those people who longed for union, whether it be with their fellow man or with the mythical ‘creator.’”
“I’ve had enough of this.” Jamaica moaned. I started to say something both mocking and mollifying, but before I could get started, he had swung open the hatch and jumped out.
“You fool!” I shouted as I ran to the hatch and watched the man fall.
“I guess he couldn’t take ‘union’ with you any longer.” Jerry laughed, clapping me on the shoulder and pulling me away from the sight of that vaguely human shape now disappearing amid the piles of milk cartons, broken crayons, old shirts, and coffee cans.
“I can barely stand it myself.” My imaginary friend added.

Two or More Industrial Clerks in a Jar

“Help! Help!” The cries of distress broke upon Malcolm Jamaica’s ears like painful reminders of inadequate tooth care. Our man of action tore himself free from the encumbering bonds of the multi-colored pipe cleaners that surrounded him and dashed towards the source of those piteous cries.
At least two men, clerks in the local industrial concern, Jamaica was later to learn, were trapped in an over-sized jar.
“What would such a large jar be used for? And who would manufacture it?” Jamaica, panting from his exertions, asked, once he had freed the indeterminate number of men.
“It is used primarily for the long-term storage of ladies’ hand cream.” Answered Homnim, senior-most of the formerly endangered clerks.
“As for your second question,” added Whippencroak, a tall man with a deeply rooted prejudice against left-handed people, “Perhaps it would be best to let Van Keith answer that.”
“Van Keith?” Jamaica repeated, looking around.
“That’s me.” Replied a man in a voice as impish as his own appearance was trollish, coming into view from behind the opaque side of the jar.
“Tell our new friend here who manufactures this kind of jar.” Pete instructed.
“Ah, well, that would be Deshafter Synthesis Programmatics.” Van Keith replied. He pulled a long piece of orange yarn from the pocket of his smock and held out one floppy end of it to Jamaica. “Gum?” He offered.
“No thank you.” Jamaica said, rising from his subhuman crouch. “Deshafter Synthesis Programmatics, you say?”
“Yes, I said that. I also said that would be the answer to your query, if they existed, which they don’t. Not yet.” He laughed. “It’s always those unspoken clauses that foul you up, isn’t that right?”
Jamaica patted his pockets for the paralyzer cone, but found nothing. Instead, he picked up a rock and threw it at Van Keith.
“I’m leaving.” He stated, hitching up his pants like a less-than-savory character from a pantomime of the American Old West and started loping away.
“We thank you.” Homnim called out.
“Van Keith, you’re an asshole.” Whippencroak muttered.

Running for the Vague Approval of the Shabby

Malcolm Jamaica pushed his way through the crowd of people and slender, one-use vending machines that surrounded the stage to glean a better understanding of the culture in which he now found himself struggling to find a role. The stage, a simple dump truck carcass turned upside down, was high enough that the shoes of the persons occupying it were at eye level with the average crowd member. The first thing Jamaica noticed once he had obtained a good view of the stage were the footwear of the fellow doing the talking. His “shoes” were plastic replicas of the heads of two former governors of the province; his toes protruded from their open mouths, resting on over-sized tongues.
“Our films industry is moribund!” The speaker declared, gesturing with one hand clenched in a feeble imitation of a fist while the other remained in his trousers pocket. The men who shared the stage with him stepped forward at this and applauded, casting meaningful looks into the crowd as they did so.
“Speak that truth!” Shouted a woman standing near Jamaica, her shirt covered with buttons, a ceremonial straw hat on her graying head.
“When was the last time something good was on at your local theater?” The speaker asked.
The crowd’s response was a cacophony of various negatives.
“Who is that?” Jamaica asked an old man who seemed not to be as caught up in the spirit of the event as the rest of the crowd.
“Winston O’Keefe.” The old man said. “He’s running for governor. Well,” he corrected himself, “He’s running for running for governor. These are just the preliminaries.” He had to shout to be heard. The crowd had begun chanting, “good plots, good plots” over and over, probably at the instigation of the button-covered woman. She was certainly helping with the chant to the best of her abilities.
Jamaica wandered away. As he reached the refreshment stand some yards away he found that the old man had followed him.
“I don’t think much of him.” The old man confessed, handing a quarter to an attendant and receiving a discounted soda pop in exchange.
“I knew a Winston O’Keefe once,” Jamaica said, “But I can’t remember where.”
“Ah, there’s a million of ‘em.” The old man belched with satisfaction.

Sloppy Beast of Palindrome Cheese

The sky had darkened to purple and Prussian blue by the time Jamaica reached the office.
“I haven’t got time to wait around.” He told the receptionist. “I need to see the main man right now.”
“Sir, if you’ll just have a seat…” the receptionist began, impatiently gesturing towards a long sofa already teeming with persons on line.
“Bah!” Jamaica dismissed her and her efforts at maintaining the status quo with a gesture of his own. He stomped past her desk to the door that led to the revelations within.
“You can’t go in there!” The receptionist jumped up and tried to stop him, but Jamaica, inured by now to any sense of propriety or manners, threw the woman back with a brutal shove. He opened the door and entered, locking it behind him.
“Who are you?” Came a basso profundo voice from behind the desk in the room in which Jamaica now stood.
At first Jamaica hunted for the source of the voice, not realizing that the massive block of sweaty cheese sitting there was a living being and not some kind of indoors duck blind or art installation.
“My name is Malcolm Jamaica.” He declared, recovering himself as he took in the reality of the situation and stepped forward resolutely.
“Ah yes. Malcolm Jamaica. I’ve been expecting you.” The creature said. It nodded slightly and settled back in its chair, reaching out with prehensile tendrils of knotted protein for the intercom.
“It’s alright, Elaine, this is a private matter.” It informed the receptionist.
“No one else seems to know you were expecting me.” Jamaica indicated the gauntlet he had just ran to obtain entry.
“Do you know who I am?” The great cheese asked.
“The central administrator.” Jamaica replied. “All the governors report to you.”
“That’s right.” The cheese nodded. “My name is Eda Made.”
“I would have thought Gouda Duog.” Jamaica joked.
The cheese, however, did not laugh. “Look, do you want the job or not?”
Jamaica had to admit that he did.

Malcolm Jamaica Will Return in a Wrinkled Envelope

So Malcolm Jamaica put on the uniform of the Post-Apocalyptic Postal Service. He made good money and was able to afford a little house made out of an old oatmeal container.
“It’s cylindrical.” He proudly told acquaintances. He had no friends.
Don Durkee still considered himself Jamaica’s friend, but, as their schedules were so different and their lifestyles so divergent, they hardly saw one another anymore and that’s no basis for a friendship.
Jamaica located his oatmeal cylinder out in the woods where he could hear the rednecks shooting off their guns and smell the chicken shit that covered the pastures all around. He settled into a routine of mail delivery and work on his memoirs.
“They’re semi-fictional.” He explained to a prospective publisher.
“Allegorical, you mean?” The man wondered, raising an eyebrow over the towering manuscript.
“Not deliberately.” Jamaica confessed. “Unless you think they should be.”
The prospective publisher sighed.
“Just tell me how you think the book should be marketed.” Jamaica added quickly. “I’ll do anything you say. I’m in your hands.” He smiled as winningly as he knew how.
“You really should have submitted your manuscript through proper channels.” The other man chided Jamaica.
“You mean, mailed it?”
“Well, yes.”
“Oh, no. Not mailed it. I know how that works. Much better for me to bring it to you personally.”
“Yes, but the problem is that when you bring it to me personally it makes it that much more painful when I reject the work.”
“You’re rejecting it?”
“Yes I am.”
Jamaica clenched his teeth.
“How painful is this?” He cried as he lunged across the desk and strangled the man with a length of obsolete typewriter ribbon.

THE END