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Copyright 1990, 1992 by Daniel Keys Moran and Jodi Moran.
All rights reserved.
We, Jodi and Daniel Keys Moran, "The Authors," hereby release
this story as freeware. It may be transmitted as a text file
anywhere in this or any other dimension, without reservation,
so long as the story text is not altered IN ANY WAY.
No fee may be charged for such transmission, save handling fees
comparable to those charged for shareware programs.
THIS WORK MAY NOT BE PRINTED OR PUBLISHED IN A BOOK, MAGAZINE,
ELECTRONIC OR CD-ROM STORY COLLECTION, OR VIA ANY OTHER MEDIUM NOW
EXISTING OR WHICH MAY IN THE FUTURE COME INTO EXISTENCE, WITHOUT
WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR. THIS WORK IS LICENSED FOR READING
PURPOSES ONLY. ALL OTHER RIGHTS ARE RESERVED BY THE AUTHOR.
DESCRIPTION: "Correspondence," a short story by Daniel Keys Moran and
Jodi Moran.
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CORRESPONDENCE:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
co-re-spon-dence /kor-e-'span-den(t)s/ n 1 a: the agreement of
things with one another b: a particular similarity c:
association of one or more members of a set with each member of
a second set: FUNCTION, MAPPING 2 a: communication by letters;
also, the letters exchanged
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"What is truth?"
-- Remark attributed to Pontius Pilate by Christian reporters
who did not like him.
"Reality is completely irrelevant at the correct level of
violence."
-- Comment by Spider Devlin, "Sunset Strip" Engineer.
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CHAPTER ONE: PIRATES ON ROLLERSKATES
It was a good day. In twenty years on the seas, Captain Henry Martin
could recall few so pleasant; the sea calm, and the wind strong; fleecy
white clouds graced the heavens, scudding across the pale blue sky with
much the same serenity that the <Voleur>, below them, rode the darker blue
of ocean.
He stood at the helm, a tall man in dark clothing. An English flag flew
at the mast, more tricksy camouflage than patriotism on his part; at his
waist there hung an old, plain, and well-cared-for saber. The blade itself
was straight, sharp, and clean; its guard, made of metal bound in leather,
bore nicks and gouges aplenty. He stood easily, rolling with the movement
of ship, without the necessity of thought.
The <Voleur> was bound south and east, two weeks out of Hawaii toward
the Cape of Good Hope; off over Martin's right shoulder, the sun was
lowering to the horizon. It promised to be a glorious sunset, had he
bothered to turn and observe it. He did not; he had survived twenty years
with the smell of salt in his nostrils, first as a buccaneer, and then an
outright pirate, through the virtue of being an immensely practical man.
He stood silently for some time. Behind him he could hear the men; a
few of them at work, up in the riggings, or at tasks down on the decks; the
rest of them lounged about with little to do, engaged in conversation or
gaming, or reminiscence of the Hawaiian women, and their habit of wandering
around stark. They were good lads, thought Martin, 'sides being swindling
cutthroats for the most. Good lads, he thought to himself -- Jonathan
especially, with the delicate cheeks.
Life was hell when you had to leave women behind.
Peter Dubrock joined Martin at the bow, bringing himself to a halt with
a gentle touch of rubber to planking. "Cap'n?"
Martin glanced to the side. "Yes, Dubrock?"
"Ten minutes or so, Cap'n." The Voleur's first officer, who was such
only to the limited degree that Martin was willing to relinquish authority
to another person, inclined his head to the hatch leading down into the
hold. "The Players, sir, say as they're nigh ready to p'form."
"Aye," said Martin. He shook his head. "I'd near forgot. Well, best not
keep them waiting. I've no desire to quarrel with the likes a' them."
"Wise, sir," agreed Dubrock, and was turning to go below when Martin
stopped him.
"Peter, what've the play itself? I missed last night, bein' somewhat
indisposed." Dubrock did not bat an eye. Dead drunk, more like, he
thought. That wasn't unusual for Martin; the captain usually managed to
miss opening night. Martin continued rather slowly. "I heard the play was,
well, eldritch."
The first mate ran fingers through sparse hair, in apparent thought.
His fingers came out with a louse, which he cracked and tossed to the sea.
"Well, sir, 's hard to fathom 'n places, to be sure." The gloom was
descending upon them fast, as the sun fell to the horizon. "'Tis known to
the title of, 'The Adventures of Doctor Death, being a play in seven
parts.' This nite's ep'sode, sir, be 'Bad Craziness an' Clowns from Outre
Space.'"
"Indeed? 'Outre Space' meaning . . ."
"Well, sir, there's none as know for certain."
Martin considered that for a moment, and shrugged. "Well, one does not
argue with the Players." And indeed one did not -- Martin shivered briefly,
with recollection of the time the Zer'din Ministers had come to take a
Player from his ship. The Player was, he heard rumors later, looking for
what the Players called "Answers." Martin had no idea what that meant, and
wanted none. One never crossed the Zer'din, never; unless one was a Player,
and mad to boot. A disturbing lot of them tended to be just so mad. He
returned from his thoughts, to Peter Dubrock; "Let's below." He turned from
the bow, and the vista of sea, and skated back to the hatch, midships. He
paused at the hatch, shouted, "Look out below, your Captain's coming down!"
and rollerskated down the ramp at full speed.
Peter Dubrock followed him quietly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CHAPTER TWO: THE REALITY FILE
Dear Danny,
Do you believe that there are monsters under the bed?
Dear Jodi,
Which bed?
Dear Danny,
It doesn't matter which bed once they're under there. Do you believe
that there's monsters under the bed?
Dear Jodi,
No. Why?
Dear Danny,
No reason. I was just wondering.
I was talking to this bear the other day (a real cool bear in
sunglasses) and he says to me, he says, "Take your cane, to beat off the
insane." And I looked at him, sitting there on my bed like he owned it, and
said, "What are you, crazy?" Only then, I went outside, and this blind lady
attacked me with her white cane (obviously thinking me the insane). And I
didn't have a loaf of french bread or anything to fight back with. So,
bleeding, I crawled back to my room and said, "Thanks for the advice,
bear."
And some people think bears are naive.
Dear Jodi,
Do you think I believe that?
Dear Danny,
Yes.
Dear Jodi,
I don't know. Maybe. Yesterday I thought of Mother, when a tea truck
overturned on the freeway and poured eight tons of dried instant Lipton tea
with artificial lemon over the cars in the left-hand lane.
Mother was a degenerate tea fiend, you know? One day she said to me,
"Set your father's hair on fire with surfing bears." I did NOT DO THIS, of
course, as it would have been wrong. . . .Mother, unfortunately, lacked
that essential moral upbringing, leaving her at a loss whenever a question
of ethics arose. Once she boiled some surfing bears because they were brown
and she thought they were tea. I didn't speak to her any more after that....
I guess I believe you.
I was talking to this bear about the Answers the other day, and he
I was talking to this bear about the Answers the other day, and he
whispered in his snide little voice, "Jodi Cool. Jodi School. Jodi Fool."
And then he waited for me to react, only I was smarter than him and
pretended like I didn't hear. But then when I walked by he looked at me
from behind his Joe Cool sunglasses and said, "The rest of your life,
baby." Cuz he thought that would really get to me.
That really got to me. "You've had it now, bear," I said. I grabbed him
by an ear and flipped him under the bed.
Dear Danny,
I need some advice. I can't sleep. When I lie down I always think
there's something under the bed, staring at me through Joe Cool sunglasses,
waiting till I fall asleep so a long skinny arm can reach up and rip my
guts out.
Love, Jodi Jodi
P.S.: Do you want to know a <good> magic trick? Ask somebody to pick a
number from one to ten. Then, run away.
P.P.S.: Last night I thought I heard a voice say, real soft, "The rest
of your life, baby." That really got to me.
Dear Jodi,
I understand about your troubles getting to sleep. Once I was out
cruising with my best friend, Sheriff Surfer Bear John, and he was telling
me, "Mister Rogers likes you." Then he would look at me sideways out of his
me, "Mister Rogers likes you." Then he would look at me sideways out of his
beady little surfer bear eyes, and laugh "Heh heh heh . . ."
That pissed me off really bad, so I told him about mother and the
surfer bears for tea, and Sheriff Surfer Bear John got all upset then and
swore surfer bear vengeance on me and my family.
Then the bats came swooping down. . . .
So you see, there really is probably something under your bed, getting
ready to rip your guts out when the t.v. is turned off.
And all because of Mother, that evil tea fiend.
The important thing to remember here is that logically it doesn't
matter whether the bears under your bed are real or simply psycho crazy
fantasies on your part. Like the cat. Reality is completely irrelevant at
the correct level of violence. Simply pump a shotgun blast under the bed
every night before you go to sleep, and you will be safe; because even
psycho bears in sunglasses are no threat when you have blown the little
fuckers into a jillion bits.
Dear Danny,
I go to college, you know. Today we were talking about quantum
mechanics. I do not believe in quantum mechanics. If quantum mechanics is
real, then nothing else is (except monsters under the bed) and you can
<never> find the Answers.
You should go to college like me. You could learn about these things;
like the cat and the damned radium pill. (I tried to tell Daddy about this,
but he just got mad and started telling me about John Reed and told me that
we were lucky that we had the only Communist father in California who was
smart enough to own stock. It was even worse than when I tried to tell him
about Pavlov and the dogs. You-know-what as Hogan's Goat, I'm <sure>.)
Anyhow the more I learn about quantum mechanics the more I hate it. (I
hate my instructor too. He has no sense of humor. Peter Buck is <not> God.)
Quantum mechanics stops you from ever really learning the Answers. I was
talking to my bear the other day, and he said, "To find the Answers, one
must first find this guy called the <Wizard>, and then learn about bit
mapping, and the stochastic principle of correspondence." And then he got
off on these roads that are paved with sunshine bricks.
And what are <munchkins>? Are they good to eat?
Dear Jodi,
Indeed not.
The other day I was out cruising with my best friend, Sheriff Surfer
Bear John. He said, "I dream of a day when surfer bears can be free of the
species prejudices that have made social progress so difficult for us."
I got pissed off then, because we were doing 108 miles an hour down the
Pacific Coast highway and he wasn't watching the road. So I did some weed
to calm down, and Sheriff Surfer Bear John got all greedy and wanted to do
some weed with me. This was Illogical, cause he didn't have any lungs or
anything, but I said, "Okay, try it, but don't you waste any you fascist
Nazi surfer bear."
Well he took the joint with one furry paw, and stuck the joint in his
mouth, and tried to puff, but you know, he didn't have any lungs or
anything. Then he dropped the joint into his lap, and he was just a surfer
bear, right, so he caught on fire, and his polyeurathane stuffing turned
into an evil brown gunk that melted in burning plastic gobs all over the
front seat.
Sheriff Surfer Bear John was screaming, "I'm burning, I'm meeellllting..."
and all of a sudden a bunch of ugly munchkins in a candy red convertible
came zooming up next to us, singing, "Ding dong, the witch is dead, the
witch is dead, ding dong, where's the fucking ding dongs? We have the
munchies." And a small one in back said, "I would even take a twinkie."
the munchies." And a small one in back said, "I would even take a twinkie."
The car careened out of control over the edge of the highway, and
plowed to a halt in the middle of a group of picnicking motorpigs, who
panicked. Then the bats came swooping down, and things got kinda hairy....
Dear Danny,
I am really worried. This is not a joke. Really. Maybe martians are
putting thoughts into my head. There's a bear who's hunting me, you know,
one of <them>. He's a big bear, and he keeps using my camera and taking
pictures of things while I'm not in my room.
<From under the bed>.
Dear Jodi,
Okay, okay. Have you been watching enough tv recently? I mean,
<martians>? If you haven't been watching tv, maybe you should. Your grip on
<reality> seems to be going.
Maybe I can help you out with an example from my own personal
experience. When I was really little, Dad hated me. I mean, he really hated
me with ultimate reality. Sometimes he would take me out to the shopping
mall and just leave me there to see if I could find my way home. Then
Mother would get upset about this, and Dad would say, "If Lassie can do it,
Danny can do it."
Well, he was right. I've had confidence in myself ever since. Think
about it.
Dear Danny,
Thanks for the advice, it really helped. I went to a shopping mall and
hung around a while, and then went home. And you were right! After that
experience, I really do have more confidence in myself. On the way home,
there was this tree, and it was, you know, staring at me with fear and
loathing, and I walked right past it. Without flinching or anything. On the
same side of the street.
P.S. There's a crack in the ceiling of my bedroom.
Dear Jodi,
This morning at six o'clock the phone rang and I picked it up and
screamed "WHAT?" into the receiver. There was this chill silence from the
other end of the line, and then an evil deep brown voice said, "Even ravens
die."
"Who is this?"
"The ghost, the ghost, the ghost of Surfer Bear John," said the voice,
and then it started coughing like it was smoking some really horrible
stuff.
"No it's not," I told the voice, because I DO NOT believe in ghosts,
but then he hung up on me, so I wasn't sure.
What do you know about this?
Dear Danny,
Things are getting weird. This morning at six minutes past six I had to
make a phone call, and I was real scared, but what could I do? I called,
and somebody picked up the phone.
Then this jerk shouted "WHAT?" into the receiver.
Do you ever wonder if things are real? I mean how do you know when
something is real, or if you're just imagining it? (Like I was talking to
the Macho brothers the other day and they were talking about either giving
their cat away or killing it. I don't know why because they don't have a
cat. I got upset about this and they got concerned and they kept saying to
me over and over, "Jodi Jodi, the cat's not real."
I <know> that already.
So? <Is> there something (monsters) under the bed? Or do I just think
there's something (bear type monsters) under the bed? And how do I know if
my thoughts are real? This is <important>. And if they are real, are they
really mine? Do you think Martians could maybe put thoughts in your head?
Do you think Martians ooze?
I was talking to this guy, and he said, "You know, I bet when you go to
sleep tonight things are going to ooze out of the walls and eat you right
up."
I looked at him, just a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. Did he
know, I wondered? Was he <Administration>? "Be real," I sneered.
He smiled, "Maybe with salt."
I turned away and pretended like I couldn't hear. On the way out he
said real soft, "They gonna munch on your bones." I wondered what he knew
that I didn't.
Do you think Martians ooze? And if they do ooze, are they oozing in and
of themselves? Or is something oozing off them? And if you could tell, how
would you know it was even real? Cuz, maybe like Venusians would just be
putting thoughts in your head.
Love, Jodi Jodi
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CHAPTER THREE: LATE NIGHT AT DENNY'S ON THE HILL
"Excuse me," says Mondo Cool, "but this is a special table, actually
<our> table, and you seem to be sitting at it."
It is indeed her table, or rather, <their> table, because her brother,
Joe Cool, is standing right behind her, and they are glaring at the man at
their table with their sunglasses. The man wisely gets up and leaves, and
they sit down in their booth at the all-night Denny's on the hill
overlooking the San Bernardino Freeway and order coffee for Joe and beer
for Mondo.
It is three thirty in the morning, on Wednesday night, and the only
people who are around are the dregs of the dregs of the city. Joe and Mondo
Cool stand out in this crowd, as they would in any crowd; elsewhere they
are outre, damn strange; here they are flat-out <class>, in a crowd composed
of hookers, bums, weirdos, insomniacs, and cops. The cops are here because
it is the only all-night restaurant in this end of the Valley, and the
hookers are here because it is the only all-night restaurant in this end of
the Valley, and yes, the bums and weirdos and insomniacs are here because
it is the only all-night restaurant in this end of the Valley. All of the
rest of the all-night restaurants got robbed out of business until the cops
made a desperate last stand in the only Denny's left open. Cops are here
twenty-four hours a day.
Mondo and Joe are here because they like the food, and the company,
even if neither one of them will admit the latter. Look at them with me for
a moment; Mondo Cool, fifteen years old, blond hair and eyes that are very
likely blue, except that she is wearing polychrome mirrored sunglasses, and
you can't really see her eyes. The rest of her is, you know, an excellent
fifteen; <don't touch and be careful about looking>. Her brother is a lost
case, nineteen and completely gone, if indeed he was ever <there, a
dignified gray unbuttoned tweed coat and a white t-shirt, smoked black
glasses that are so dark they can be used for welding, blue jeans and
tennis shoes with one red sock and one bare and bony ankle showing.
The television over the bar is showing a videotaped soap opera, <The
Reality File>, and on the screen a young lady in her early twenties is lying
in bed, tossing and turning, unable to get to sleep. A bad day she's had
already, her jumbled blankets seem to say, a real downer of a day,
monstrously bad, and, sadly, or at least Mondo Cool finds it sad because
she is sympathetic young jailbait, sadly, the young lady's night is not
going to be any better either, in fact it will very likely be the worst
night of her life, because while she is tossing and turning long skinny
arms reach up from under the bed and clasp her tightly in their embrace,
and then some gloop oozes out of a crack in the ceiling and down the walls
and eats her right up, and the soap opera breaks for a commercial.
Joe Cool is sitting on the other side of the booth from Mondo, and he
cannot see the cyclopean television screen, so all he hears is sounds,
<ooze>, gloop, some screams, and then more <oozing>, and the sound of
munching bones. He leans forward and says intensely, with an odd light
in his sunglasses, "Is that real? Are these hideous sounds <real>?"
"No, no," says Mondo soothingly, "Memorex," and that appears to satisfy
him. On the television screen a big man, a really big man named Abner with
an earring in his right ear, is glaring out of the television and directly
at Mondo Cool, and he's saying, "Kick-a-Boy Joy Juice; <the beer for
sadists>." He snarls from the screen: "<Drink it or I'll kill you>."
As if by coincidental timing, their drinks arrive, and the waiter puts
down Joe Cool's coffee and says quietly, "Excuse me, Miss, how old are
you?"
Mondo Cool looks up at him. "Fifteen."
"Oh." This answer disconcerts the waiter, who says, "I could have sworn
you were twenty-one," and wanders away.
Mondo Cool drinks her beer in silence, watching the soap opera, while
her brother glowers with the ease of long practice on the other side of the
table. "You know what pisses me off?" he finally says. "The price of
amphetamines. It is now around forty cents a tablet for good whites. I
cannot <take> this."
(There is a rumor that is almost completely untrue that Joe Cool has
not slept in six and a half years. Mondo has personally seen him sitting
very quietly for as long as fifteen minutes at a stretch.)
Mondo Cool does not say anything, because she has heard it all before,
usually at strange hours of the night, or, worse, in early parts of the
morning, after Doug and Sissy, their parents, have done something that Joe
Cool finds particularly revolting.
From the back of the restaurant, voices are raised in brief argument, a
man shouting "Peter Buck <is> God. He is, he is!"
Joe Cool smiles suddenly, for the first time since they have entered
the restaurant. Mondo Cool drinks the rest of her beer, and says, "Yes, I
hear them." Joe gulps down what remains of his coffee, and they get up from
their table, and wander over to the rear of the restaurant, where they find
four of Buck's Boys sitting together in a booth, wearing their white robes
and arguing four-on-one with the man whom Mondo Cool had kicked out of
their private booth.
Mondo and Joe pull up chairs and sit down next to the booth, and there
is sudden silence; the argument stops, Buck's Boys look at them with a
sullen paranoia, and the man whom they are berating slips away quietly. One
of Buck's Boys, a beautiful young boy with shining soft brown hair and
delicate eyelashes, says conversationally, "Peter Buck is God."
Mondo Cool gets out of her chair and squeezes into their booth, next to
the beautiful boy, who suddenly looks very uncomfortable, and she smiles at
him. "I am afraid you are mistaken," she says very gently. "Peter Buck is
not God." He looks at her questioningly. His lower lip trembles.
"Strawberry poptarts," she informs him, "are God."
Joe Cool very carefully buttons his coat all the way up, unfortunately
not noticing that he has misaligned them, so that there is one button at
the top that just hangs there. He hunches forward and whips off his
sunglasses, and then whips them back on again before anybody has seen
anything.
"I am afraid," he says in his deepest, most gravelly voice, like the
very first munchkin to tell Dorothy where to go in <The Wizard of Oz>, "I
am afraid you are both wrong. True, Peter Buck is not God, but neither are
strawberry poptarts God. Strawberry poptarts are a false prophet that
sprang from the spit of a platypus and the semen of a three-horned toad."
He smiles; they stare at him with trembling loathing. "<Blueberry>
poptarts are God."
With a howl of rage and anguish, one of the three Buck's Boys who I
have not described at all leaps out of the booth, leaps at Joe Cool, but,
fortunately, is restrained by the two Buck's Boys (who I have also not
described at all) who are not staring with something very like fear into
Mondo Cool's sunglasses.
Mondo Cool leans forward and whispers into the beautiful boy's ear, "Do
you want to know a <good> magic trick? Ask somebody to pick a number between
one and ten. Then, run away." She smiles, kisses the very beautiful boy
gently on the very tip of his nose, and squirms out of the booth, and she
and Joe Cool are wandering away when one of Buck's Boys says to the Buck's
Boy who he is restraining, he says, "Schulzie? Can we let you go now?"
"Yeah," said the one called Schulzie, "but it's a good thing you
stopped me --"
Joe Cool freezes in mid-stride.
"-- from taking that dumb bast --"
Joe Cool take four steps backwards, pivots, knees one of Buck's Boys in
the crotch, pushes the other one away and slams Schulzie up against the
wall, shoves his face up to Schulzie's and says, "He called you Schulz."
One of the cops, a few tables away, mutters something about keeping it
quiet and then goes back to talking to a whore.
"Huh?"
"He called you Schulzie. Are you related to Charles Schulz?"
Schulzie blinks. "N-no. No, I'm not."
Joe Cool's sunglasses stare at him intensely. Joe Cool's hands release
him. He takes a deep breath. "Okay." He turns around again and hands his
keys to Mondo Cool. "You better drive. I have my sunglasses on."
Mondo Cool takes the keys. She stops as they are paying the cashier to
glance at the mirror. Maybe electric green mirrored sunglasses would be
better, she thinks, and tries to picture it.
Well, maybe not.
As they wander out the door, the videotape of <The Reality File> is
just winding down, and all that is left are some crunching sounds...like
chicken bones being eaten.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CHAPTER FOUR:
IN THE LAIR OF <ADMINISTRATION>;
IN THE VILLAGE OF THE NAZI MOTORPIGS
"Will ya hurry it up, Moe?" Jerry Oemster wrinkled his snout in
disgust. The office was a mess, paperwork everywhere, opdisks and infochips
piled in haphazard stacks all over the place. He placed his hamhocks on his
ample hips and bellowed "Damn it, Moe, the game starts in less'n a hour!
How long is this going to take ya?"
Moe Gillis glanced at his watch. "Another half hour, Jerry. I got
progress reports, plot developments, and character sketches that
Schutzstaffel Reichsfuhrer Himmler wants to see before six. Figure, oh,"
his eyes screwed up into little folds of porcine flesh, "twenty minutes for
the work, and another ten minutes transmission at 9600 bpi. Of course,
that's if the 9600 line is up. If it's not, we send it on the 4800 and its
forty-five minutes before we get confirmation of receipt."
Jerry snorted. "Hmmph. You really think that porker reads that stuff?
Come on. He sends it zipping right along the line to the Serathin, and the
Lord of Light alone knows what <they> do with these things."
A soft, chilled voice behind Jerry Oemster said quietly, "That porker,
Tech, is a dedicated servant of the Reich."
Jerry turned around with exquisite slowness. He snapped to attention.
"Obersturmbannfuhrer Reinberg!" He saluted swiftly, a bit too swiftly, and
struck himself in the forehead with the meaty thud of hamhock striking
flesh.
Obersturmbannfuhrer Reinberg wandered around the room, staring with
evident disbelief at the piles of documents, unlabeled infochips, terminals
blinking warning messages. He was a fine specimen of Sus Sapiens, some 200
kilograms in mass, with deep-set red eyes, yellow teeth and dark eyebrows.
He wore full-dress Gestapo regalia, but for his t-shirt, which bore the
inscription, "If you love something, hunt it down and kill it."
He turned and faced Jerry and Moe and bellowed madly, "This room is a
pigsty!" Moe and Jerry flinched. "I have seen cleaner rooms kept by lower
life forms," Reinberg screamed. "Late duty for both of you! Not," he said
with sudden savage precision, "that you would have had any choice anyway,
but under the circumstances I find it particularly appropriate." He paused,
jowls quivering, pigmentation taking on a scarlet hue, glaring at them, and
yelled, "At Attention, Swine!"
Jerry and Moe came to abrupt attention.
Obersturmbannfuhrer Reinberg took deep breaths for several seconds, and
said, more calmly, "Earlier today we had to remove a Player. You know what
that's like. The Serathin have personally sent us instructions to the
effect that the paperwork must be done by midnight." He scowled at them
more genially. "I have given my word that it shall be, or . . ." He smiled
nastily. "Reichsfuhrer Himmler will hear about certain comments made in
this room. Have I made myself clear?"
Jerry said weakly, "Yes, Obersturmbannfuhrer. Perfectly clear."
Moe ventured timidly, "Sir?"
"Yes, Technician?"
"What was the Player removed for?"
"She was getting too close," said Reinberg with simple malice. "She was
looking for the Answers."
Moe turned pale. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
"That will be all," said Obersturmbannfuhrer Reinberg. He adjusted the
visor of his hat, and glared at them. "Midnight," he reminded them. "Be
done by midnight. The Serathin are waiting for this." He stalked out
without further word.
There was silence for a while after he left, and then Moe said
curiously, "What do you suppose would happen if we didn't have this ready
when the Serathin sent their Player to pick it up?"
"Dunno," muttered Jerry. "Hope we never find out, either." He sighed.
"Let's get to work."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER FIVE: CORRESPONDENCE II
Dear Jodi,
The other day I went our cruising with my best friend, Mick "The Duke's
Daughter" Cohen. "I dream of a day," said Mick to me confidentially, "when
we redneck homosexuals of Jewish-Irish descent can be free of the
prejudices that have made social progress so difficult for us."
I got pissed off then, because we were doing 117 miles an hour down
Pacific Coast Highway, and I was worried about catching grody diseases
sharing my joint with him, and besides, he wasn't watching the road. So I
did some weed to calm down, and Mick started shouting, "Off! We must get
off!"
Anyhow, he dragged me out to this place where a bunch of Rotarians were
having a picnic, and he pulled the car over to the side of the road, and
got out these sticks of dynamite, and started lighting them and tossing
them into the middle of the crowd of picnickers. We stood up on the bluff
overlooking the picnic grounds, laughing and chuckling at the sight of
Rotarians being blown into bloody bits.
"God I love dynamite," Mick said. "Sometimes, when a really big one
goes, I get my rocks off." Mick scowled at me suddenly. "That's not the
sort of thing a man likes to have publicized," he said grimly. He calmed
down, and went back to watching the rising clouds from the explosions
below. Then he jumped into his electric green convertible, shouting "Off!
We must get off!" and went zooming away, laughing like a maniac and driving
far too fast.
Dear Jodi,
We're planning a hot dog and twinkie roast for the Thursday after next.
Wanna come?
Dear Jodi,
I talked to Kathy the other day. She wants to know if we're getting her
anything for her birthday. She wants a bed or else a motorcycle. (I said we
should just get her a car and then she wouldn't need a bed or a motorcycle,
but she didn't laugh. She has no sense of humor.) And she says you haven't
come to class all week. What's going on?
Jodi Jodi? Hey, Jodi. . . .
Dear Kathy,
The other day I was out cruising with my best friend, Motorpig Mike.
The sky was awesomely blue, and the sun was all bright and shining like the
dependable fusion furnace it is reputed to be, and Motorpig Mike leaned
over and whispered in my ear, "I dream of a day when we motorpigs can be
free of the species prejudice that has made social progress so difficult
for us."
I got pissed off then, because we were doing 127 miles an hour down
Pacific Coast Highway, and he wasn't watching the road. So I did some weed
to calm down, and Motorpig Mike got all greedy and wanted some too. Now,
this was Illogical, because he didn't have any hands or anything, just
hamhocks, which are not noted for their great manipulative ability. But he
was pushy, so I said, "Okay, have some, but don't you waste any you filthy
greasy Nazi motorpig mutant pervert."
Well he took the joint in his hamhocks, but he didn't have any hands or
anything, so he had to use both hamhocks to sort of balance the joint in
place while he toked on it, and while his hamhocks were off the wheel the
car went out of control and we went plowing into a herd of tanning surfer
bears. Then like the next thing I remember was this excellent sensation of
being thrown from the car, and flying until I stopped flying.
When I woke up again, the car was a massive twisted burning wreck, and
Motorpig Mike was trapped somewhere inside that foul mess, screaming,
screaming, and one of the surfing bears said to me, "Indeed I have always
liked the smell of frying bacon."
Love, Daniel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CHAPTER SIX: EPILOG
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" -- that is all ye know in life, and all
ye need know.
-- Y. Keats, "Ode to a Grecian Urn."
END
