PART XXIV - THE STICK in the MUD PIE

Three kids sat huddled around a small pit in the driveway, shooting marbles. They each missed, but with nine shots in their automatics, they had plenty of ammunition to hit those pesky pieces of glass. All would have been well, had the slugs not ricocheted into their dad's car.

"Uh-oh," they said in perfect synchronicity.

Ms. Vickers walked around the corner, saw the boys, and started to shake her head. She was wearing her bonnet, a Victorian outfit from ankle to neck and possibly even a chastity belt - we didn't have the balls to check.

{Yet another Author's Note: For the record, it was CWBorysowich who was short on balls. I just wasn't interested.

KDAmery}

"Tsk tsk... Shouldn't be letting mere children play with firearms!"

"Look granny, they're only snail guns. You put snails in here and slugs come out here!"

"Yeah and the shells eject out the side."

Ms. Vickers shook her head again. "Still, look at the mess you've made of that car. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Not to mention the cruelty to those poor..."

"Hey, that snail's getting away!"

Ms. Vickers looked down and saw the snail climb onto her shoe. "Eeeeeeek! Get that thing off me! Such unclean things!" She kicked it off and stepped on it. "Oh no! I killed a living creature!" She rushed to the lawn, wiped off her shoes, and dropped to her knees, reciting twenty-three Hail Marys.

The boys giggled and ran into the back garden to find more snails.

Ms. Vickers continued reciting her rosary as Guido - the first disciple and the reason for needing sixteen more - looked at the dripping slugs on his car and then at the praying weirdo on his lawn.

"Muh-thah of God, how am I evah gonna get to Skuppernung's-a funeral ona time?! Ey lady! Take-a you slugs and get offa my lawn!"

Rushing to her feet and brushing off her petticoats, she turned to Guido and stammered "I am Ms. Petunia Vickers and I must iterate clearly that I had absolutely nothing to do with this outrage upon your vehicle."

"Whata da hell is stuck upa you skirt lady? You-a flatten my grass an you make-a da neighbours stare. Madre de Dios, you are worse dan my kids!"

Stuffing her nose in the air she blurted "Well I never!" And stomped off with the snail shell still crackling under foot.

"Anda you probly nevah will!" Guido pulled open the car door and hopped in. Revving up the engine he tore down the street.

As he passed her, Ms. Vickers said, "Dirty gangster. Oh! I maligned another human being!" She dropped to her knees again, landing on a June bug.

PART XXIII - QUANTUM MECHANICS and BASIC COMMANDO REPAIRS

Lawrence the Arabian opened his eyes and saw horseshoes. Pushing his stall door open, he cantered out to the paddock to find a trainer, or a groom, anyone who could relieve him of this over-enthusiastic hoofwear.

There was no one around.

"Dammit, don't tell me they fell down that space warp again."

Bursting through the time space continuum, ushered by several flares and shrink wrapped jellybeans, came Bob the Quantum Mechanic. Putting down his toolbox, Bob asked, "Spacewarp acting up again?"

"How did you know?"

"You called me."

"No I didn't."

"Sure ya did, twenty minutes... Shit, it must be a time warp too. I'll get right on it." Bob opened his tool box and pulled out a quark wrench. "Let's see what it is now... Holy shit, Schroedinger's having a field day!"

The stable door creaked open and in stepped Niels Bohr, wearing a full jockey outfit and sporting a bull whip. Bob looked up, shook his head and went back into his tool box to find a pair of proton priers, and started to work on some multidimensional anomalies. "Niels, want to give me a theoretical hand. These electron clouds look pretty darned odd. So do you, I might add."

Niels Bohr pulled out a theoretical hand and gave it to Bob.

"Thanks." Bob tied it to a neutron cluster and bonded the fingers each to a muon. "That should just about do it..."

A large puff of flame and smoke scorched the paddock, and when the air cleared the Phoenix was sitting on the charred ground. "Oh, great, what am I doing HERE?"

Niels' eyes widened, and with a leap mounted the bird and let out a crack of the whip, causing the Phoenix to bury it's head in the manure.

Bob rolled his eyes. "This is going to be one fuck of a job. What are the probabilities on this?!"

The phoenix pulled its head out of the ground and said, "What kind of sand is this?"

Lawrence snorted impatiently and went back to his stall to call Bob. Bob dug deep into the tool box and recovered a subatomic drill and started to work harder. After pushing around some particles and doing a neutron dance, Bob had found the problem.

"Here it is. Worst case of infinity twisting I've ever seen. Niels, get off your high bird and give me another hand."

Niels jumped down, clapped, and took a closer look. "My god Bob! It makes the Moebius look like a straight edge!"

"Yeah, it's a pretzel all right. Hand me those neutrino clippers, lets see if we can't untangle this a bit... There we go. All it needs now is a little molecular bonding and... Bingo!"

"Nice job, Bob."

The Phoenix disappeared.

"Uh oh, still got a glitch. Lessee, what else... Hey, is that Oort cloud supposed to be that small?"

"Hmm, looks like we've got a shrunk solar system in here."

"Geez Niels, we may have to call in the Top Guns!"

"No... Not...Beepo the suicidal clown?!?"

"Hey, he is a disciple you know. And he only gets real suicidal on MinuteMaid orange juice."

Smokey the Bear fizzled into existence. "Anybody see Yellowstone?"

Niels looked at Bob. "Call him."

PART XXII - GRANNY BEAT A. J. FOYT

Muriel skidded her Monte Carlo SS to a stop. "Dusted that fucker. Teach him to race an old lady."

Sitting at the red light, she revved the 450 cubic inch two stroke V8 with competition headers, radical cams, and high compression pistons. The roars could be heard in Connecticut as blue smoke filled the intersection. The Nameless One Jr. turned around in his seat. "Grandma, you're burning oil."

"So what else is new, junior? Let's go pick up some ice cream." Muriel floored the accelerator and ripped the pavement off the ground. The car jumped thirty feet and shattered windows all through the county. A traffic cop pointed his radar gun at her, but failed to get a reading. The SS was at Baskin Robbins in half a minute.

They both got out of the car and noticed that the Baskin Robins had been flattened. "Gosh, lose more ice cream stands that way!"

Blazing home, they arrived at the brick house. Jenny was out mooing in the back yard. "We keep telling her she's not a cow, but we need the eggs."

"Grandma, do you know that... yesterday... I was out, and I stopped this man... he was on a boat... and he wanted to shoot... he had these big guns... and New Orleans was going to be flattened... did you know that?"

"Yes, you told me. Go get your father back from Mars, alright?"

"Ok, but I heard on the radio... In my room... That there was going to be a big solar storm today... And it was going to affect the symbiotic relationships between ferrets and bugle birds... did you know that?"

"Caught wind of it... Now go get your father before his dinner gets cold."

"You want me to go now?"

"Yes."

"How much ya pay me?"

"How about I don't put you back in diapers?"

"Ok."

Once the tyke had left for Mars, Muriel loaded her rail gun and went out to hunt NRA members for lunch.

PART XXI - BURLAP! I NEED BURLAP!

A rag tag group of people gathered outside the Addiction Research Foundation to meet a small group of perplexed scientists.

"You are addicted to what?"

"Burlap, man, I need musty burlap! Got any?"

"Yeah," said a second addict, "the older the better."

"It would seem that they are addicted to burlap."

"Not just burlap," said the lead scientist. "Musty burlap!"

"How do you take this stuff?"

"We inject it."

"How? Burlap is a solid."

"Yeah, well, we find a sewing machine helps..."

The addict then rolled up a sleeve, "See the tracks?"

As scientists observed, they saw a thread of burlap sewn into his artery using several different stitches.

"It was a Kenmore."

Sid the burlap pusher joined this crowd and opened his trench coat, saying, "Wanna buy a potato sack? Carefully aged in a damp basement, get'em right here..."

The lead scientist asked the second, "Is this illegal?"

"I doubt it. Hospitals sew people's arms up all the time. If they want to do it on their own..."

One addict staggered up to Sid. "I need somethin big, dude. Got anything stronger?"

Looking about furtively, Sid said, "I can getcha a square inch of artist's canvas."

The addict's eyes widened. "How much?"

"Grand."

The lead scientist was shocked. "What is this, a designer drug?"

"Naw, graphic design shit doesn't getcha nearly as high. What we need's the really fine stuff."

"You mean with bleach and everythin'?"

"Yeah, but after a few doses, you have to change to another artery."

Two addicts in the back were admiring the work of their embroidery machines. A third, obviously jealous, glanced away pretending it was nothing.

A Rolls Royce drove up. Sid turned to the driver and said, "Go to the usual spot. The sail cloth's where it was last time." The driver handed out a briefcase. Sid glanced inside and smiled at the stacks of thousand dollar bills.

One scientist passed out on the sidewalk at the sight of the money.

"Get up Emerson! God, how have we missed this for so long?"

"A friend of mine said he was into nylon, but I didn't believe him..."

Sid turned. "Nylon's pocket change. It's no more effective than a cigarette or a cup of coffee. Rayon, on the other hand, is much better. But for max effect, nothing, not even sailcloth, beats Kevlar. High tech wins again."

"By the way, what's yer price on fibre glass?"

"30 thou an ounce, why?"

"Fuck, I could buy a Vette for that kinda cash..."

Sid's eyes widened. "Don't tell them that! The surplus'll kill me!"

Suddenly, a large black car screeched up. Out stepped... The Secret Assassin. "I got half a ton of carbon fibre. Twenty grand a gram." The crowd surged all over the car.

The scientists retreated into the main ARF building and proceeded to bolt the doors, just as a guy with a roll of Dacron on his left shoulder approached the swarm.

The lead scientist said, "Quick, what do we do?"

"Corner the market on sack cloth?"

"Polyester?"

"Experiment with vinyl?"

"Naw, vinyl's dead. How about digital disks?"

"We're looking for material, not music, you TWIT!"

"Aren't we supposed to help these people recover, not push new substances on them?"

"It's all in the name of science. We supply them, study them, then we know how to treat them."

"Got it! I'll get the cotton sutures!"

"Oh God! When the authorities catch on and illegalize materials, kids'll slit their wrists and get high on the stitches!"

"Outlaw materials? What'll we wear?"

The scientists looked at each other. "Where are the nurses?!"

The quiet scientist eyed a spool of thread nestled in his pocket protector.

PART XX - A PYTHON and an ANACONDA SCALE to SCALE

Monty and Albert were shaped much like screws. Their internal organs had lost all coherence, and most resembled oatmeal. The chunky parts were probably bones.

In the center of the room was a large ball of scales. Two different patterns were visible, but other than that, it looked like a luggage maker's idea of a medicine ball. Now that they had killed off each other's masters, the battle royale was to begin. Albert's anaconda had just recovered from a nose bleed and was a little weak. Monty's python was getting old and had slipped a disc in the previous brawl.

The anaconda sniffed, getting blood flakes on his opponent. The python hissed in annoyance, and squeezed tighter, then winced. The anaconda grinned, then bit its adversary's tale.

Goldilocks screamed, and Monty's python had to think up another story, as the little girl was swallowed by the anaconda without any porridge. As the anaconda was distracted by his meal, the python weighed him on his calibrated scale. The calibration was off, due to age, but still, the anaconda came in over weight.

"I'll have to disqualify you. You're in a different category."

"So eat something yourself."

"Alright." Monty's python determined that Albert's anaconda was very tasty.

The Dark One read the prophecy over again and again, trying to find a loophole, or a wormhole, or a bullet hole. But there was nothing useful, except the bit of hamburger left on the napkin.

And time did its thing. It went around. And what comes around goes eastbound.

I've got it! You need laughing gas!

The Man who Always Walks North hit a building. Since that always is unbreakable, the building gave way.

Waiter? A tank of Nitrous Oxide for the little boy in blue!

Yah mon. The kiddie must have speed.

This drug culture thingee is everywhere! It has to stop. We must nail it at it's source. That's right! The United Way must be stopped. Those hippie drug lords are ruining our youth by posing as men of the cloth.

There're none so blind as those who will not pee.

Don't ask. Questions are the sign of a sloppy mind.

The Voice wore khakis!

Stop oratory beneviolence. Ban readings of the Scarlet Letter.

And while we're at it, how do we know we can trust you? You've been sitting here, reading the Plot, but no-one's cleared you for it. What are your sympathies, anyway. You're not a red-skinned-red-commie-red-daemon-worshipping drug fiend, are you?

Just checking.

Don't worry. ISO knows where we are, and they're coming with the rocket launchers. Everything's fine.

Don't touch that Dial. Soap is an Aphrodisiac.