Conference thebay::joyoflex

    a cat dashed across his path.  Before he could recover his
    balance, a pair of sodden dogs, interested only in the cat,
    crashed into his legs. He tumbled over . . . 

    Cursing the dogs as he fell (why were they out on a night like
    this, he mused, briefly), he noticed to his alarm a gaping hole
    where a manhole cover should have been . . .

    
    	He scrambled to his feet.  The seat of his pants were now
    	uncomfortably soddened and coated with mud from the puddle
    	in which he landed.  But he quickly forgot his own plight
    	as he realized that the hole was not empty.
    	

    "Somebody's going to get killed by that hole," he thought. "I wonder if
    that cover's around somewhere; maybe I can prevent a serious accident."
    As he peered into the blackness below, he heard a faint sound: A
    baby's cry. Or was it a cat's meow? Or maybe just the wind. ... 

        As he peered in, a tentacle reached out and wrapped around
        his neck.  Although he struggled, it pulled him down into the
        hole.  He reached into the pocket of his coat, and pulled out...

    ...a poppy seed bagel.  Frantically, he groped for the end of the
    tentacle. Grabbing it, he crammed the tentacle's end through the 
    hole in the bagel.  The effect was immediate -- the tentacle recoiled,
    as if in excrucating pain.  He dropped to the ground.  As he tried
    to catch his breath, he noticed a faint purplish glow several yards
    to his right.  It came from beneath a small metal doorway.  He walked
    up to the door, noticed a handle near the top, and turned it.  The
    door swung slowly inward, and the glow increased.  He looked through
    the door and saw...

    A strange glowing pyramid, pulsing with violet haze.  Fog foamed
    onto the floor from an unseen hole and swept past him through the
    doorway.  He felt hypnotized by the plasma which glowed within the
    pyramid...and he felt himself drawn towards it...helpless to resist...
    

    He peered into the pyramid, and there was a elfin being scratching
    in a notebook. He approached the pyramid and looked closer. The
    violet plasma curled from the ink that as the writer scratched.
    Looking at the writing, he saw that it read:
    
    It was a dark and stormy night.  James leaned into the howling gale as
    he falteringly picked his way through the debris swirling at his feet.
    "How much further?", he wondered desperately, as he turned the corner
    into yet another dimly lit street.  He clutched the collar of his cloak
    ever more tightly, in a vain effort to prevent more rain reaching his
    already sodden clothes.  Then, suddenly ... 

    ... a bell clanged loudly, causing James to bang his head on the
    roof of the pyramid entrance.  As he reeled back, half dazed, he
    spotted the bell attached to the wall, with a notice beside it.
    
    As his vision cleared, he made out the words "RECURSION ALARM".
    "My goodness," thought James, "they've thought of everything!".
    Hurriedly he pressed the reset button, and the deafening noise
    ceased.  Turning his attention back to the pyramid . . .

    ... he noticed a strange writing that covered the surface. The marks
    were unlike any alphabet that he had ever seen.
    
    Was it possible that a non-human hand had left these scrawlings here for 
    humanity to decipher? Could it have been Erik Van Daniken?
    
    Pondering these thoughts, he was surprised when suddenly...

    he realized the shapes were not square, or angled, but rather soft
    and squishy, such as might be made by tentacles dragging across
    the sand.  A chill ran down his neck, and he knew that if he turned,
    he would see the creature from the sewer crouched behind him, ready
    to embrace him with a dozen arms and kiss him with suckers that
    refused to let go.  
    
    Its fishy breath brushed his cheek; its scaly skin whispered across
    the stone floor.  
    
    Without stopping to think, James flung himself into the pyramid.
     Smoke and sparks flew upward, but around him the violet darkness
    deepened and turned to black, like squid's ink.
    
    

    
    a voice coming from inside of the pyramid cried out, "Who rang that
    bell?"
    
    James looked up and saw a nasty-looking man with a walruslike mustache
    leaning out of a perfectly round hole in the side of the pyramid.
    He noticed that the door attached to this perfectly round hole looked
    exactly like the top of a manhole cover, but had no time to ponder
    that.  "Oh, gee," he stammered, "It wasn't me!"
    
    The nasty-looking man eyed him suspiciously.  "Then I suppose it
    was your little dog, then?" he demanded.  "Can't you read the signs
    on the pyramid?  It says 'No noise after 1100 hours!'"
    
    James was about to explain the the marks were unlike any alphabet
    that he had ever seen, and that he didn't have a dog, when...
    
    

    .... the words on the wall began to dance before his eyes. No wonder
    he had never seen such an alphabet; for each letter was made of
    a seething squirming mass of maggot shaped worms, moving to a rhythmic
    and unwritten music. Slowly the letters took on a recognisable shape.
    For a fleeting moment they made sense through the torture that was
    being inflicted on his tired brain. "Josie Hunt (d.b.p.f.m) will
    get even with Jeff Goodenough!" The words changed again. Slowly,
    oh so slowly, a new message began to form "Dogs for sale, apply
    within".
    
    "Can I buy a dog?" James panted, showing his canine teeth. "If you
    can answer me this riddle..",rapped back the nasty-looking man that
    James was now watching with a stupid grin on his face and an ever
    increasing poodle around his sodden shoes.
    
    "What grows down as it grows up?"
    
    "Please sir, I know" said James, right hand held aloft by his right
    arm. "It's.....

    . . . a duck, or a goose, or a swan!".  "Right!", said the nasty-
    looking man, somewhat taken aback by the puzzle-solving abilities
    of our hero, "Now, I suppose, I'll have to sell you a dog.  Do
    you have any money?".  "Funny you should ask that", replied James.
    He reached into his other pocket and pulled out . . .

    
    . . . an anti-personnel plasma blaster which he had purloined on
    a recent excursion into a bizarre hyperspatial dimension.
    "No, I have no money", replied James. "But then again, who needs
    money? No-one in the world upstairs will ever know, and I've always
    had the desire to kill someone just to see what it feels like".
    The nasty-looking man, surprisingly not too taken aback by James'
    particularly uncharitable attitude mumbled to himself "Oh no, not
    again". With those words, the man waved his hands around his head.
    As he did so a vortex of vivid yellow light formed above James'
    head and from the epicentre fell a small bowl of petunias onto James'
    skull rendering him unconscious.
    
                    . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
    
    James awoke some time later wondering what had hit him and whether
    the word 'suddenly' was going to be used in the narrative anymore
    when suddenly......

    a white rabbit scurried across his path.  It stopped, regarded a
    clock next to James, and sighed.  "I'm late!  I'm late," she bewailed.
    "What will mother say?"  
    
    "I beg your pardon?" said James.
                   
    The little rabbit looked at him.  "Oh dear," she said.  "You weren't
    supposed to hear that.  I was on my way to see as doctor."  She
    stopped and dug into her purse.  "Some specialist named ..." she
    pulled out a card, "Seuss."
    
    "Bad choice," said James.  "He specializes in cats and grinches.
    Heard of a fellow named Doolittle."
    
    "Wasn't he an aviastor?"
    
    "Distant cousin.  This one's a doctor," said James patiently.  "He
    can speak your language."
    
    "Oh, I'll be off, then.  Thank you so much.  But ... where does
    he practice?"
    
    "Try the yellow pages or dial `411,'" said James informationally.
     
    "Very well then," said the rabbit.  "You have been so kind, sir."
                                                                     
    "Please, not so formal," said James casually.  "Call me James. 
    I deal in securities."
    
    "Stocks?"
    
    "Bonds," said James.
    
    "I'm Jane," said the rabbit.  "Jane Doe."
    
    With that, she was off, hippity-hopping down the bunny trail.
    
    James wondered what could possibly happen next.  Then ...

    ...he was brought to by the unmistakable aroma of petunias.  Strange,
    it wasn't their season, he thought, as he rubbed the sizable goose-egg
    lump on his head.  He tried to sit up, but found himself restrained,
    strapped hand and foot to a most curious mechanism.  Everywhere
    gears and coils and electrodes hung and hovered about him, awaiting
    their turn to have at his bodily energies.  Off in the background
    was the over-confident whir of machinery, and evil laughter pealed
    somewhere nearby.  His eyes followed the sound, and horror dawned
    on him as he saw the now-white-haired visage of Bob Barker, his
    hand resting on a huge wooden lever.....  

    
    "NO !" shouuted James. "You can't do that ! Please don't pull that,
    I'm getting married next week !!! Cut anything off but that !"
    
    "Ahhhh ha ha ha ha ha", laughed Bob Barker maniacally. "Welcome
    to my own personal theatre of hate" he drooled......

    Spittle trickled into the switches.  Sparks flashed and smoke poured
    from the short-circuited wires.
    

    Unfortunately for Bob Barker, the wooden handle, which he had bought
    from a second-hand sedan-chair dealer, had an iron rod through it.
    The combined effect of the spittle and the water draining from James's
    clothes broke down what little resistance remained in the crumbling
    wood.  There was a brilliant flash, and Bob Barker fell to the ground,
    stone dead.
    
    The clamps released, as if by magic, and James was free ... his
    clothing now thankfully dry once more.
    
    As he bent down to pull up his purple dayglo socks (for such they
    were), he noticed . . .

    ... a small pool of a hellish looking black goo, with two small
    puddles off spittle caught in the goo giving the effect of eyes,
    which constantly seemed to follow a point three inches behind our
    hero.  Not have seen such an unusual effect before, James carefully
    scooped up the goo, along with the spittle and a couple of flies who
    had the misfortune of being trapped in the stuff, and placed it
    carefully in an oversized Zip-lock  Baggie which he happened to
    ba carrying around.  As he was placing it in the baggie, however,...
    

    "Don't you DARE !"
    
    James looked around with such speed that his eyes stood out like
    organ stops and his ears created such a draught that the single
    solitary light globe that tried desparately, almost in vain to cast
    its illumination over the scene began to weave and bob on the end
    of the worn, frayed and twisted pair of wires so that James' shadow
    began to try and escape from where it was attached to his body.
    
    "But it'll fetch a high price on the black market" exclaimed James,
    indicating the black goo that now was seeping through the fine material
    of which the baggie was constructed.
    
    "THAT is not the point." said the dismembered voice in a barely
    understandable wail that reminded James of the Banshees of the last
    Blue Ninjas film that he had seen on MTV.
    
    All of a sudden, a desparate thought fought, brought ought and sort
    refuge in Jamies tortured mind..........

    
    ...the thought materialised and words formed on James' trembling
    lip, "But I know the casting director of the Blue Ninjas film series.
    If you let me take this away with me then I promise I'll put in
    a good word for you. I mean, you're a natural for the r�le of the
    Banshee."
    "Oh? Do you really think so?", inquired the voice."It's very kind
    of you to say so."
    "Absolutely.."
    "You know I've always been a bit of a thespian", the voice continued
    in a marvellous imitation of Lawrence Olivier. "My mother always
    thought I'd go far on the stage. But I never had the opportunity
    you see. I mean, it's all well and good having a versatile voice
    and a memory for scripts, but I'm afraid the film fraternity is
    prejudiced against dismembered voices and I ended up having to take
    the first job I could find. It's not a fun job. I mean, who could
    get job satisfaction from scaring intrepid explorers ? Maybe someone
    with a psychotic mentality, but I'm just not like that. Deep down
    I'm warm, moist and cuddly. At least, I would be cuddly if I only
    had a body. Life's not easy when you have a thromble and four kids
    to bring up. No-one cares about us down here. Oh no, talk about
    charity, pah !..." The voice droned on complaining about welfare
    funds and increased tax thresholds for the rich. James, seizing
    his chance walked silently out of the room. Alas he did so backwards,
    and thus as he backed out of the door was unable to see the.....
    
    
    
    

    gigantic hayrick behind him - complete with pitchfork!  And it was
    into this hazardous situation he was backing.  The middle tine prodded
    roughly into his posterior, bringing a frightened, "OW!" from James'
    lips.  He whirled to catch a glimpse of whatever menace was now
    threatening him, but all he saw was a placid cow, quietly chewing
    her cud.  Unfortunately, he realized due to the style of the pitchfork
    and other implements surrounding him that it was sometime in the
    late 1800's...and there was a lit kerosene lamp hanging from the
    wall...suddenly a horrible thought came to his mind, as his lips
    silently formed the horrid word..."Chicago"...and the cow started
    with fear at the implications, upsetting the kerosene lamp from its hook...

    . . . and causing it to land squarely in the open water barrel above
    which it hung, thereby dousing the flame and extinguishing the light.
    It was now pitch dark and James was alone with the cow. James concen-
    trated hard. "No - not Chicago. It was Aerosmith that did the number
    about the pitch forks. Or, was it Whitesnake. Damn, I can never keep
    those rock groups straight."

      He fumbled in his breast pocket for the Cricket lighter, snapped
    it and played the light on the wall where he found a triple D-cell
    flashlight which he quickly grabbed and switched on. Examining his
    surroundings he noticed a door on the opposite wall and sauntered
    over to open it. As he lifted the latch and pulled the door toward
    him he was immediately overcome with unspeakable horror as . . . 

    
    . . .the door was that of a cupboard and from inside fell, onto
    James' head a stack of Liberace and Richard Clayderman records!
    "Aaarrrgghhh ! No !", shouted James in horror. He slammed the cupboard
    door and ran to the other side of the room whereupon he found another
    door. He opened it and walked through to emerge into a sunlit
    courtyard. In the courtyard he saw eight maids a milking, a pear
    tree with a rather startled partridge in it going by the name of
    David Cassidy (according to the sign affixed to the tree) and on
    the ground in front of him lay five golden rings.
    Stopping to ponder for a moment just how tiresome these recurring
    song themes were and how they were even worse than the repeated
    use of the word suddenly in so many thrillers he had read lately,
    James was unaware of a masked man approaching him from the side.
    The man lunged at James. James barely had time to turn round to
    face him and ask himself "Who *is* this masked man?" when blackness
    enveloped him once more as the fiendish assailant jabbed James with
    a hypodermic syringe filled with anaesthetic....

    ... and just before he blacked out, he realized it was The Lone
    Syringer.  Oh, no!!!!  As his legs crumpled, and he collapsed to
    the ground, the index finger of his right hand brushed against one
    of the five gold rings ...

    He slipped it on his finger, and immediately vanished just as he became
    unconscious. The Lone Syringer looked around in bewilderment. The
    Partridge looked with amusement on these proceedings and squawked at
    the man in black, "He's gone! He's gone! No good looking!"
    
    James awoke some time later to feel as though a large red eye was
    searching for him, pinning him to the courtyard. Just before it
    swept over him, he...

    reached out and began unplugging HAL's intellect modules...he must
    beat this integrated fiend before it brought about the world's end.
    It KNEW what he was up to, it KNEW what he wanted, it KNEW its only
    survival lay in the death of James and others like him who...

    
    ...managed to pull the intellect modules from a machine which just
    happened to be in the courtyard of an 18th century house. James,
    realising the absurdity of the situation concluded that he was either
    in a dream or a character in a William Gibson novel. Or both.
    Shaking himself into reality (subjective though it was) he removed
    the ring with tolkienesque applomb and threw it away thinking "I've
    read *that* book already and don't fancy meeting any orcs, goblins,
    elves or even hobbits just yet.."
    James stood up and saw that the courtyard had vanished and that
    he was standing in a small grey room. "Hmm. Must have been a
    hallucinogenic inducer running somewhere" he thought knowing that
    he couldn't possibly have been in the 18th century.
    The room seemed to have no doors and the only noticeable feature
    was a glowing ceiling which pulsated light in the seven colours
    of the spectrum in sequence. Accompanying the light was a low humming
    sound and from somewhere outside the room, some distance away, James
    was sure he could hear a little girl singing "Red and orange and
    pink and green, yellow and purple and blue, I can sing a rainbow,
    sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too."
    "Not another musical theme", he moaned. "Oh well, must be a reason
    for it". And that's where he made his first mistake since waking
    up for . . .

    . . . the balloon trip he was to take with that cute girl with the
    pigtails and her obnoxious little dog, too.
    
    He left his room at the hotel and walked down the wide boulevard
    toward a park with large open area.  The balloon was inflated, its
    bright yellow color in sharp contrast to the green of the buildings
    around him.  He boarded the balloon and was shortly airborne.  As
    he flew he felt as if he were in another dimension.  He was jolted
    from his reverie by the rough landing.
    
    The wind was blowing hard; he heard the sound of a door slamming
    against its frame repeatedly.  He walked over to investigate.  He
    entered the rustic, broken down house.  A large matronly woman
    approached him and said . . .

    "Who's dere?"
    
    "Well, um, I'm James, and I..."
    
    "Whatch doin in my garden?"
    
    "Well, you see we..."
    
    "What's dis 'we' business?  I only see one of you."
    
    James quickly looked around, noticed that the cute girl, the little
    dog, and balloon were all gone, having been replaced miraculously
    by a rather large but friendly looking loaf of bread.  James thought
    to himself 'when am I ever going to get through this ungodly series
    of plot twists?'
    
    "Well?" the lady impatiently questioned.
    
    "I, um, you see it was a dark and stormy night, and...
    
    RECURSION ERROR --- REPEAT RECURSION ERROR --- RECURSION BREAK IN
    EFFECT --- PLOT COMPLICATION HAS BEEN ADDED.  WE WILL NOW RETURN
    TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED STORY
    
    But as James stared to tell the whole story over again, without
    warning out of the nearby shubbery, which wasn't there before but
    which suddenly appeared in part due to the efforts of the kind folks
    at Recursion Breakers Associated, leaped...

        A slavering grinch, which proceeded to..
        

    ... a small man with raspberries on his hat. 'Hello James!' said
    the small man, appearing to be quite friendly. James stepped forward
    to shake the small man by the hand, only to discover that the small
    man was actually taller than he was himself. 'Hmmm', thought James,
    'Not only devilish plot twists, odd song themes and random blackouts
    but optical illusions now too!'. He had had enough. He turned round
    and walked out of the oddly shaped building, across the road, and
    sat down on the old lichen covered bench in the picturesque park.
    'I must get away from this' he thought, when all of a sudden...

    ... "Psst.  Psst.  The white dove sleeps in the sand."
    
    James looked behind the bench.  Lurking behind a nearby tree he
    saw the source of the odd statement.  A middle aged man with a tired,
    weatherbeaten face dressed in an old trenchcoat and a faded fedora
    was casually lighting a cigarette.  James pointed at himself, "Me?"
    
    "You are to take this package to the corner of Main and Washington
    Streets and wait for a pizza delivery van to stop.  The driver will
    ask if you ordered the large pizza with extra anchovies.  You'll
    answer 'I prefer broccoli.'"
    
    Before James could reply, the man left in a large, nondescript panel
    truck.  James then decided to go to the corner of Main and Washington
    to wait for the pizza van, but became more and more curious about
    the contents of the shoebox-sized package he was carrying.  He decided
    to take just a quick peek. . . 

    One peek was enough, and he hurriedly replaced the lid.  James
    strode off purposefully towards his rendezvous ...

    It was not long after he arrived at the designated corner that the
    pizza truck arrived. The driver, a short, balding man descended
    with a groan and a sigh. "These spy stories get through to me" he
    said breathing in James face. "yuk", muttered James, "He's got
    litotes. Must be from eating too many hyperboles with those pizzas"
    
    "Me names Mal, Mal leProp", said the fat man, "and I'm supposed
    to ask you abou pizza and anchovies and your supposed to tell me
    you prefer some dumb green veggie or other"
    "Brocolli"
    "Bless you, that's a nasty cold you're gettin! Now do you have a
    package for me?"
    
    James looked at his hands. The package had slowly, and totally without
    causing any sensation enveloped his hands. "These must be handshoes
    in the box" he thought and he tried to extract his hands. 
    
    
    Unnoticed by either Mal or James, another personage had appeared
    on the scene. Dressed in tatters and rags, with red spiky hair and
    a large gold safety pin through his upper lip, he swaggered up to
    the pair. "Going boxing, eh?" he said to James. Before our hero
    could reply, the chunky punky added "Spose you (indicating Mal)
     serve mexican tacos? I mean you are from a tac oway shop  arntcha?"
    "Watchit you", stammered Mal, "or you will have had your chips"
    "Just codding, er its a bad halibut I have" replied the punk, moving
    the safety-pin to his right ear.
    
    James was still struggling with the box which by now had encompassed
    his arms. Suddenly (there's that word again thought James) the box gave
    way with a horrendous rending crash. Soap powder spread into the gutter
    and began to bubble. Within seconds, the pizza wagon began to
    disintegrate and finally fell in a heap with a thickening sud. "Now
    you've been an gorn an dunnit" yelled Mal, "Oh Walls... I scream" Mal
    began writhing in torment on the floor and got warmer and hotter and
    began to glow and get hotter and hotter. James picked up the plastic
    glider that had fallen from the packet of soap (It had been placed
    there by an escaped packer from a cornflakes factory) and climbed
    aboard. It was not long before he was soaring aloft on the therMal being
    generated by the erstwhile pizza flogger . 
    
    Up, Up and away where would he land, would he land would he would
    he would he .........
    

    find the slavering grinch again...

    ...and solve the mystery of the events since the dark and stormy night,
    or would the adventure just continue until it fell off the end of
    the JOYOFLEX, the destiny that also threatened the football ?
           
    
    Presently he DID land, and indeed saw a grinch.
    
    "Hello grinch", greeted James....
    

    
    "Hallo James. What can I do for you me old China?", asked the Grinch
    cheerfully.
    "Well for a start you might explain to me just how one second I
    was in a door-less room with only a flashing ceiling and a nauseating
    70's pop hit for company and then the next second I was walking
    out of a hotel room which was booked in my name ye in a hotel in
    which I have never registered!"
    
    "Oh, that's easy", replied the Grinch smugly. "You were the victim
    of a negative reality inversion. Fairly basic occurrence in surrealist
    novels actually. Nothing to be worried about, although it can be
    a bitch sometimes. Once I was having a perfectly pleasant evening
    eating dinner with a beautiful female when I was caught up in a
    N.R.I. The next thing I knew I was fighting for my life on some
    weird purple planet with an overheating blaster and three million
    toe eating hooples, one of which very kindly told me he name was
    Mott before proceeding to bite off by big toe. The trick with these
    inversions is recognising the key. You see, in my case I realised
    that the key lay in a song title. Hooples, Mott, after a while it
    was obvious. I simply started singing 'All the young dudes' and
    in a flash I was out of there."
    "Gosh, thanks grinch."
    "what's a grinch anyway", James thought. "Now then, what's the key...?"
    
    

    "ah...the key" mumbled the grinch...."Maybe one of these will do..."
    
    he retrieved from his sizable pocket one of the largest collection
    of skeleton keys, F-blanks, lock picks, and sonic screwdrivers James
    had ever seen - obviously this man had the key to everything.  Maybe
    one of those would help James get a handle on the situation....
    
    He reached out and waved his hand over the keys.  One began to glow,
    one out of the many.  It was heavy, bronze, and had a knurled surface.
    Quickly the Grinch removed it from the ring and disappeared slowly,
    his evil smile going last...his final words..."I must get back to
    Whoville in time to stop Christmas...toodles!"
    
    Leaving James standing alone, key in hand, humming quietly to himself
    a song that had just popped into his head, as if from nowhere...
    

    ...a little girl in ruby slippers appeared. James looked up startled
    as the little girl proceeded to explain how her name was Dorothy
    and that one minute she'd been at home in a tornado and the next
    she had landed in a world of nauseating technicolor being proclaimed
    a heroine for having killed an evil witch with the house she just
    happened to be flying in at the time.
    This perked James up slightly as he now knew that this sort of thing
    did not just happen to him. He looked around and saw a yellow brick
    road. Hmmm. Of course! The song. It was 'Somewhere over the rainbow'.
    He was in Oz.
    But there was something odd about it. For a start the girl did not
    have a Kansas accent. More of the sort of accent you would get if
    you took a Cockney from his home, put him on a strange island and let
    the accent evolve for two hundred years. Then there were the kangaroos
    bouncing around with band-aids on their noses, carrying cool boxes
    and singing songs about barbecues and sunrises in the morning....
    "Oz?" Thought James. And then his face dropped as the awful truth
    dawned upon him. Yes, the evil mind behind this bizarre series of
    adventures like puns. Oz was no longer a mythical land a tornado's
    ride from Kansas but was a large island in the antipodes....
    "Strewth mate, you'll cop some nasty sun burn without a hat round
    here" boomed a voice from behind. James whirled round to see a jovial
    man with a beard, glasses and a paintboard walking towards him.
    "Who are you?", inquired James aready regretting having asked the
    question.
    "Me name's Rolf cobber. Here, have a tinny", and with those words
    James was thrown a blue can which to his delight he found contained
    beer, although a little watery.
    James was just about to thank Rolf when he saw him bouncing off
    into the distance down the yellow road. Shrugging his shoulders
    he took Dorothy by the hand and proceeded along the same route.
    

    Being a gentlemen, James slurped just half the beer from the can,
    and with a gentle underarm pitch, passed the remaining XX to Dorothy.
    "Thanks, mate," said Dorothy, as she drained the can and kicked
    it into the undergrowth.  "Hey, you!", came a shout, "I don't want
    your trash in my garden, thank you very much!".  They turned sharply,
    and saw an elegantly dressed lady, wearing ornate spectacles and
    a blue rinse.  When she saw James and Dorothy, and how weary they
    looked, her attitude softened. "Hello, possums", she said, "I'm
    Edna.  Come into my little cottage for a cup of decaff, which my
    servant Madge will make for you".  Thankful for the chance of a rest,
    the pair turned into the neat little garden . . .

    As they passed by the lovely rosebushes they noticed, extraordinarily
    enough, that the house was made of gingerbread...and two small children
    sat looking sadly out the window.  "Who are they?", Dorothy asked.
    "Hansel and Gretel, two delicious...er...lovely little orphans I'm
    taking care of until they find a proper home...care for some scones?"
    

    "Oh rather!", exclaimed Dorothy but before she could take one, James
    jumped between Edna and Dorothy and knocked the plate of scones
    to the floor. "That was foolish, my Possum" muttered Edna, " You
    upset me again and you will have to change your name to Jamie."
    
    "Quick, Dorothy, run" gasped James grabbing her by the hand and
    pulling her towards the door.
    
    "Yes run spot run" agreed Dorothy, remembering the fundamentals
    from her degree in literature. The two dashed from the house to
    discover the garden had grown in size. No longer was it a stroll
    to the garden gate as they remembered, it had been in the home country,
    it was 50 miles. "Just a smallholding, obviously." thought James.
    
    At that moment, the local bus came by. Dorothy climbed in the pouch
    followed by James. "Two Thruppenies, please" he asked the conductor,
    paying with a couple of joeys. The bus bounded off like a learner
    driver with kangaroo petrol. The fresh air blowing through James'
    hair reminded him that this was how the sheep stayed away from the
    heat - a good way to cool a bah lamb and even to give Bill a bong.
    Just at that moment, a phone sounded. James answered it. It was
    Boomer. It was always good when Boomer rang. "Coming to a party?"
    Boomer asked. "Only if Ding goes." replied James.
    
    James looked out. There had been a change in scenery. There were
    no trees. "Nullabor" he said, wondering how an ancient aborigine
    word had come to him from the blue,"Pitjinjatjara" he muttered.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    pppp     ooo     w     ww     w     !!
    p  p    o   o     w   w  w   w      !!
    ppp     o   o      w w    w w
    p        ooo        w      w        !!
    
    
    he found himself.....
    

    
    Sorry about the interlude guys, but someone asked about the puns.
    The pun was:
    James found himself on Oz (The wizard of Oz's land). However, it
    turned out to be in Australia, the Aussie term for which we all
    know is Oz. Joke. Laugh. Now.
    On with the story.....

    On with the story.....

  .... as the smopke cleared, James found himself once again alone, lying
under a large oak tree on which was nailed a wooden sign at a strange
wobbly angle. Of Dorothy, there was no sign, wooden or otherwise. James sat
up and looked around. In the distnce he could make out quite clearly the
evidence of modern life; smokestacks, smog, brick buildings and so on.

He decided to walk away from all that and back into the wood. Coming down
the path he spied an aged rabbit, hobbling along with the aid of a stick. At
his side was an equally aged pig. They were evediently in heated debate. At
the sight of James they stopped. "Where am I?", enquired James.

"The Four Acre Wood.", replied the rabbit. "Used to be the Hundred Acre Wood
till that scum bear sold us down the river."

"Yeh, and then he was knighted and hired that stripey thing as his enforcer.
You can't walk the streets of Poohton now without feeliong his presence. He
controls most of the eastside and all the honey plants across the river."

James decided he had to act. He would save what was left of the wood. He would
sort this bear out. He set off for the town.

As he was strolling down Pooh Boulevard he noticed large posters all over the
place; "Big Bear is Watching YOU!" with the stern face of a flabby bear
peering down on the populace. James turned into a side alley. He regretted 
this act only a few seconds later when....

    
    ....he stepped into a particularly large and offensive pile of dog
    excrement.....

    "Oh, poo!" he muttered...
    
    Several seconds later a few rough-and-tumble looking agents flew
    around the corner, brandishing billy clubs, and quipped,"What's
    all this then about taking our leader's name in vain?"..."We'll
    teach rubbish like you a lesson..." and proceeded to drag him off
    to the slammer.  He was thrown in a cell with a particularly tigerly
    looking fellow.  "What's your name?" asked James...
    
    "Tigger - spelled T-I-double-guh-err" replied the cowering cat.
     "What you in for?" asked James.  "Well, at the start of this whole
    takeover, I was just minding my business, chatting very nicely with
    Owl and Eeyore, when suddenly...
    

    Tigger continued talking for some time, telling all about the
    disasterous events that followed, but James heard little of it.
    Between the excessive use of the word suddenly, the surealistic
    changes in scene, the frequent references to pop music, and especially
    the inescapably bad puns, our hero was literaly worn out.  Suddenly,
    however, he knew what to do.  With "The 20 Greatest Hits of Sonny
    and Cher" bashing relentlessly through his head, he struggled to
    a standing position.  The walls began spinning around and around,
    and he fell to the floor, unconscious.  He awoke to find himself
    in a second class seat on a third rate plane when the fourth rate
    pilot came over the speaker and said...

"... well, someone back there can fly the thing then! I'm off."

The door to the cabin burst open and the pilot ran through with what
looked like a knapsack on his back, wrestled open the rear door and
jumped into the void.

A few minutes later, his co-pilot did likewise, having realised that the
intercom had been on by mistake. From the pilots' cabin black smoke
drifted....

    
    ...and through the smoke, James could make out the shape of a grinch...
    
    ........a SLAVERING grinch !

    When into the fray jumped John Cleese yelling "What's all this about
    slavering then? It's your kind what causes unrest!". 
    
    He was about to beat the grinch senseless with a banana when...

    ... suddenly ("what, again?" thought James) a train ran through
    a tunnel, a group of men appeared smoking large cigars, fireworks
    exploded everywhere, and a lion roared.  James noticed a sudden
    desire for a cigarette when out of nowhere a Germanic voice proclaimed,
    "Remember, sometimes a banana is just a banana."
    
    James stopped in mid-swing to ponder where he had heard that statement
    before, when ...

    ... a flight attendant approached the group of men.  "Cigarette smoking
    only, please.  It is a policy of Amtrak Airlines that cigars are,
    like, totally uncool.  And absoloootly no fireworks!"  She stepped on
    the remnants of the last Chinese cracker, and as she swept up the
    crumbs, reflected fondly on their recent stopover in Hong Kong ...
    
    [there, I think we tied up all the loose ends ...]

    ...until James screamed, "who's flying this thing?".  The flight
    attendant was torn from her reverie, and breathily replied,
    "Fear not, for I am Joyo Flex, world renowned flight attendant and
    amateur pilot, and it's time for another dea ex machina", when suddenly
    ...

    the engines stopped. James grabbed the nearest parachute and jumped
    from the plane. As he drifted downwards, he spotted a large whale
    plummetting pensively and at a greater speed in the same direction.
    "What could he be thinking about?", James wondered. "The meaning of
    life? The abruptness of its ending? The nature of a God who could
    create such an absurd situation?" James decided that for all the
    absurdity of life, his Creator was nearly good enough to tolerate and
    began to worry if he would soon find himself landing in a pile of
    blubber. He couldn't see where the whale had landed, nor where he was
    going to land because, after all, it was a dark and stormy night and... 

    The Captain and the Mate stood on the Bridge. "Mate. Tell me a story."
    The Mate being a product of the high technology twenty-first century
    was ever aware of recursion alarms and so he began. " One fine day
    in the middle of the night, two dead men got up to fight. Back to
    back the faced each other, raised their swords and shot each other."
    
    "That's silly, that is", exclaimed the Captain. "Don't you know
    anything better?"
    
    "Well, The problem is, is that due to my high technology background,
    I have been taught to discard so much of todays literature that
    my childhood has been deprived. No longer can I find out why Noddy
    cannot put the roof on the garage before he puts up the walls so
    he can stay dry, should it rain..." 
    
    With this the mate began to cry sobs of humungous size so that the ship
    was in danger of capsizing. At that very moment, James entered the
    Bridge from below, carefully moving the Mate's foot from the top of his
    Tam o'shanter. "A Professor Prune left these for me." said James
    indicating a pair of garish trousers that he was wearing. "These are
    his famous time-trousers - So Goodbye, no longer shall I have to slave
    before the mast for you, Captain Queeg or whatever your silly name is
    (James was no student of literature) and with that, James moved the zip
    down from the top and realising that _that_ word has not been mentioned
    in this whole diatribe , disappeared in a cloud of smoke and a mighty
    Hi-oh Silver.
    
    "Stupid Nit!" Said the Captain, "Now, are you feeling better, Mate? If
    not then I shall tell you a story" He began "It was a dark and stormy
    night" . The Mate hit him.
    
    Meanwhile, Our Hero was whirling through time. As the draught reached a
    crescendo that threatened to mortify him, he came to a sudden stop.
    looking around him he saw....... 
                                       

    
    . . . . that it was absurd that he stop in mid air so he embarked
    once more on his descent. He then connected the presence of the
    whale with some bit of knowledge that was floating around in his
    head. "Of course, someone's just used an infinite improbability
    drive locally. Now that means that aliens really do exist, or the
    government has been building vehicles based on popular science
    fiction". The latter option seemed the most plausible as James
    remembered that it was due to a 1977 blockbuster science fiction
    film that the USA had recently commenced a hugely expensive 'defence'
    programme. "Right, so if some government has invented the drive
    then it stands to reason that it has been invented by the most
    improbable country. Now what's the most unlikely nation to do this?
    The Chunda Pigmies of deepest Indonesia. Which means that  I'm about
    to land on a small island in the Pacific to be taken prisoner by
    the most technologically advanced tribe of naked cannibal midgets
    in the world. Perhaps I should have cancelled the milk and the
    newspaper this morning..."

While he was still pondering whether he'd put the cat out or not he noticed that
it was quite cold. Bloody freezing to be exact. In fact it was 40�C below zero
and he was sitting in an igloo opposite a Lapp who was wrapped up nice and warm
in a dressing-gown made of polar bear furs. James was in fact dressed in a 
Finish sauna towel.
It was a pretty inconceivable race for thinking up this devilish device. Lapps 
are not exactly renowned for being technically minded, in fact they hadn't even 
invented the wheel yet. During the creation there'd been much too much time
spent on the Fjords and the very far north had been left just as it was. They're
also very taciturn and don't even speak to each other if they can help it.
The Lapp produced a bottle of 18 year old aquavit from under a sleeping husky
and poured some into two hollowed out elk tusks. James refused the offer of ice 
cubes. He gave one to James and just sat there staring at him. 
James raised the beaker and said "Skol".
The Lapp remained silent for ten minutes and then said (in a perfect Oxford 
accent) "do you want to drink or do you prefer to talk?".
James took a large slug of the aquavit and said ...

    
    "Bewdy, Sport. Good drop o plonk yerve got there. Not like that
    other Mongrel's p... " Sanity screamed into James' mind like a Concorde
     departing Heathrow. "Oops, sorry old chasp, quait forgot myself
    for a moment there - had an antipodean holiday, you know - never
    been the same since. Now where were we? Ahhh yes,  I should like
    to talk; for it has been a long time since I have met with one who
    is so, how can I put it, so well spoken. Clearly you must be an
     erudite man." 
    
    "No, I just read a lot", answered the Lapp with a ;-). 
    
    "You're _not_ a JoyofLex noter, are you?" asked James , with bated
    breath.     
    
    "Well , actually, old man - ......." 
    
    A large stag antler whistled out of the stygian darkness and struck
    James' new found ally in between the shoulder blades. He toppled
    forward and buried his face in the now rapidly emptying aquavit
    bottle.
    
    "What a way to go", thought James as his thoughts turned to solve
    the problem of what may happen next. Grabbing his time trousers,
    he donned them  in the way that had caused young ladies, when talking
    of his sartorial elegance to postulate that he not only dressed well,
    but quickly too. Moving the zip, he winced as he realised that he
    was not alone in them. As he was whisked away from that cold nightmare,
    he became aware of a strong smell emanating from his nether regions.
    Looking down he saw an anchovy pizza in the hand of Mal leProp.
    
    "Ohh my wicked past is cathing up with me, and he adjusted the zip
    to go to a new place in time... If only he could find.......

    
    ....his inflatable guitar, at least he would be well equipped for
    a Status Quo concert.
    Then, as James was wondering if he would ever see the Quo again
    the temporal mists began once more to surround him. Suddenly there
    was a jolt, the mists cleared and James found himself outside the
    igloo. Obviously those in charge of temporal transport had got fed
    up with James hitching free rides on the sub-ether net.
    "Looks like I'm walking then", said James doing his coat collar
    up tight.
    "Too right mate", said a passing walrus.
    "That's funny", noted a nearby penguin, "a talking walrus".
    
    James headed off into the midnight sun.

    ... and was never heard of again.

    About two months later, James' bother-in-law Albert realized that
    James had not been heard from for some time.  Now, Albert wasn't
    particularly depressed at this notion, since he had never been fond
    of James, but he realized that James might pay dearly to be found
    again, since either 1) he did not wish to be found, and could be
    blackmailed, or 2) he would be so happy to be rescued that he offer
    large sums of money to Albert.  Now, Albert knew the value of a
    pound, and thus decided to set off to find James.
    
    He had just packed up his suitcase, and was on his way out the door,
    when not so suddenly...

    ...in fact rather slowly, gracefully even, the floor began to
    tilt.  
    
    At first Albert thought it was an illusion, but as he tried
    to step over the doorsill, he found his foot groping higher
    and higher in the air.  The sill was above his head now!  The
    piano slammed into the wall and blew away in some nameless
    purple space!  The rug skidded and bunched around Albert's
    ankles.  He clutched at the wall, but it slid past his grip.
    
    Like the lid of a gigantic tipsy garbage can the floor swung
    to vertical and dumped him into . . . 
    

   a speeding violet Maserati.
   
   He looked sharply at the driver and they shrieked simultaneously.
   
   "Albert!  What are you doing here?  You're not supposed to be here!
   You're supposed to be... I'm, I'm, I'm just..." her voice trailed
   off.
   
   Albert admirably recovered his calm and straightened his appearance
   before replying.  He felt he had the upper hand since the driver was
   his wife, who was not where he expected her to be, either.  Before
   he could speak, however, the steps of the Capitol loomed in front
   of them and they found themselves inside ... 
   
   

    the Oval office.
    
    "Why howdy stranger. Want a jelly bean? I'm a virgo, what's yours?"
    
    Abert looked around in amazement. He caught sight of himself in
    a mirror. With his bright red hair, baggy pants of red and yellow
    and a big yellow 'M' on his front , he realised that there were
    two clowns in the room.
    
    He spoke.."Ahh so! Mr Plesident, You want chop suey? I come from
    Golden Arches takeaway ."
    
    suddenly, he was surrounded by nine foot high,
    half-hour's-walk-across-the shoulders burly Marines. suddenly they
    grabbed Albert, who suddenly found himself carried aloft. suddenly
    they put him down at the top of the steps outside the building.
    suddenly he was bouncing his way towards the Lincoln Memorial.
    suddenly, he awoke to find himself bouncing around inside the Maserati.
    suddenly he exclaimed to his wife "Remind me to give you driving
    lessons". suddenly she pushed a large button on the dash marked
    'don't' and suddenly he was flying through the air.
    
    [Author's note. I have spelled 'suddenly' above with a small 's'
    as it wishes to remain anonymous.]
    
    Albert awoke with a jolt. Through the haze of tired bleary eyes
    he could see a blurred form emerging through his sleep. After what
    seemed an age he could see nearly::goodenough to recognise ......

Albert was just about to speak - one word formed on his lips ("What") the next
two words formulated in his brain, when there was a horrifying sound. For those
of you who must know what the sentence would have been the second word was "the"
and the third was "hell".
The noise strongly resembled 40 tons of blubber and bones crashing through snow
covered ice. To be exact, the whale weighed in at 39 tons, 11 cwt, 2 stones, 6 
lbs and 11 3/4 ozs. It would have occupied the drilled crew of a japanese whaler
for all of 6 hours. For those of you who like statistics it would have made 
2,476,000,000 candles (standard Woolworth size).
In the middle of the debris sat a stunned Lapp - yes it was Olaf Svensson Kai
Zanussi Mathews-Nordkap III. One of the last descendants of the Norwegian branch
of the Vikings. His ancestors had plundered picturesque holiday resorts on the
east coast of England and raped flaxen buxom anglo-saxon wenches. In fact one of
the biggest turkey farm owners in Norfolk is a second cousin thrice removed,
hence the first part of the double-barrelled surname. There was also a god
father of his who started up a small refrigerator business in Italy - hence the
fourth christian name.
"Would you like a penguin?" Olaf asked.
Albert was about to unwrap the small chocolate covered biscuit covered in orange
and silver foil when ...

    
    ...he remembered that his doctor had instructed him not to eat
    chocolate because of his heart condition. Why Albert had to forgo
    the pleasure of chocolate just because his doctor had a heart problem
    had always been puzzling to him, but nevertheless old Doc Holliday
    knew best.
    "No thanks Olaf", said Albert "doctor's orders you know".
    "Ok." replied Olaf seizing the biscuit back and tossing it into
    the back of his Lotus.
    "Isn't the Esprit a bit impractical out here?" inquired Albert.
    "Yeah, a bit, but it really pulls the girls", Olaf retorted with
    a wink. "We'd better be going now before someone notices that blue
    whale. The people round here are very protective about whales and
    we'd have a hard time explaining how that one got in such a mess.
    Come on, hop in"
    
    Albert entered the car and fastened his seat belt. Olaf turned the
    ignition, blipped the accelerator and roared off along the ice to
    the sound of Devo on the Blaupunkt stereo. Albert remembered the
    song from a few years back. It was 'Snowball'. Seemed fitting somehow,
    especially as he noticed that there was desceding from the sky a
    giant snowball the trajectory of which would hit their car and squash
    it and its occupants flat in approximately two seconds......

    Fortunately, Albert remembered the blurred form from .67.  Hurriedly
    taking it out of his pocket where he has stuffed it, he looked at
    it more closely.  It was a tax form so large that it quite enveloped
    the snowball.  "Phew! That was close", said Albert, as he tossed
    the erstwhile missile containing missive aside.
    
    Parking the car, Albert and Olaf stepped out. "Psstjtt!", hissed
    a voice ...

    "whatcha doing", came a little voice from close to Albert's ear.
    It was his conscience (he hadn't even known he had one...)
    
    "You know, if you had a Mallett Handy, you could knock that Olaf
    cold, and take the car.  Aren't you curious as to what all those
    buttons do?  Don't you want to try JUST A FEW of them?"
    
    His curiousity piqued, he withdrew a silver hammer from his pocket,
    and - Bang, Bang..........................................
    

    
    
    Two shots rang out and two bullets missed Albert's fee by inches.
    Startled, James looked around to see a fat man 
    standing some twenty yards away sporting a Purdy shotgun.
    "wh wh who are you?", trembled Albert.
    "Maxwell's the name", said the fat man "and you're holding *my*
    silver hammer! Since that got stolen I've had nothing to hit my
    arch enemy Murdoch with and his filthy rags have taken over the
    world. But I won't let the Sun shine in my Times whilst I have breath
    left in me. I looked in the Mirror this morning and told meself
    that today I was going to get my silver hammer back and kill the
    man who stole it. That means you have four seconds to live"
    "Bbbbuuut, I didn't steal it", quaked Albert.
    "Oh, didn't you? That's alright then. Just give it back and I'll
    be on my way".
    Albert tossed Maxwell the hammer who deftly caught it and walked
    off.
    Now Albert had to explain to Olaf why he was about to hit him with
    the hammer. Olaf did not look to be in the sort of mood that would
    accept anything but the truth.
    "well, it's like this", Albert began.....

    "it was a dark and stormy night...."
    
    Just then, a vehicle pulled up, traveling at break-neck speed. 
    On the side of the wagon was written, "Recurring recursion police".
    "Right, you're not going to stop this recursion yourselves, so the
    recursion alarms have alerted the recursion police to call in the
    recurring recursion police....I'm Sargeant Once-again from the
    Department of Redundancy Department - and I'm afraid I'm going to
    have to take you in..."
    
    

    "Personally, I mean speaking for myself, you know in my opinion
    and avoiding cliches like the plague, I believe, if I really stop
    to think about it which I don't very often because it hurts when
    I laugh and remembering that I had one once but the wheels fell
    off that its you lot who have been taken in , reading and writing
    all this drivel or is that dribble" Albert, muttered under his breath,
    as an aside, to anyone who wanted to listen to his stage whisper..
    
    His attention was grabbed by the throat and his thoughts forced
    to heed the warnings of his prickly concience that  ever threatened
    him with doing something good in his life for humanity's sake as
    he was wrapped over the knuckles by his best friend that you wouldn't
    want as an enemy. 
    
    "Albert Pennywhistle. You are hereby sentenced, paragraphed and
    chaptered to serve one day at a time in the state library until you
    have completely learnt the Dewey system by rote." Albert looked up.
    That voice that was penetrating the inner blurr that once was his mind
    - it was so familiar, so round the corner up his alley on his side of
    town  - what was it about it that he knew would change his life, cause
    him to be born again, cross the tracks, turn over a new leaf? 
    
    Albert looked up again. AS high as a mountain on top of the world
    was a peerless figure, a paragon of virtue , veritable citizen of
    Society . It was
    
    
     JAMES....
    
    
    "Erro, Jamie, me old China, Ow d'yer be?" gasped Albert in his laconic,
    easy-going, man about (Kentish) town sort of dialect, accent and
    patois.
    
    "Do not speak to me in that way, my man. I'm the moderator of this
    conference,discussion,note, talk-back-video,chat-about-crt. And
    I will not have you messing up, besmirching, rubbing my face in
    the mud, calling me names or running down this high quality ,
    lexicographical thesauristic epistle."
    
    "Turn it up guv. You can  go and get..."
    
    Albert heard a sharp crack and looked at his feet. The floor under
    him was missing, gone away, a will o the wisp black hole.
    
    He started to fall, noticing inter alia James' smiling face.
    D
     o
      w
       n
          d
           o
            w
             n .
    
    _that_ word, he found himself.......
                                 

    "...not reading all the note, eh??  " said James and taking my name
    in vain, " Thats definitely not good." 
    
    "How did you get here, and so quickly too? asked Albert.
    
    "I got myself set hidden for saying something out of place" Said
    James, but now I am ready to resume my rightful place as hero of
    our tale."
    
    No sooner had James said this when Albert .....

    ...took out a gun and shot James in the head. James was pronounced
    dead at the scene and Albert was arrested for his murder.
    
    The trial coverage was sensational, due the fact that Albert was
    somehow distantly related to the Queen of England and the Beatles, and
    also due to his unconventional defense. Albert claimed he killed James
    according to commandment .63, revealed to him directly by the Creator,
    and that was "good enough for him."
    
    The jury found him guilty of course, but the judge suspended the
    sentence, at least, for the murder. He did, however, give Albert two
    years probation for "excessive repetition of puns". 
    
    Albert moved to Maynard, Massachusetts where... 

    ... he chanced upon a large old building beside a pond.  Next to
    the pond was a huge parking lot (they must mean "car park", mused
    Albert).  He noticed several people wandering about aimlessly,
    muttering things like "I'm sure I left the danged thing right here".
    
    Wandering inside, Albert saw a rather burly uniformed gentleman seated
    at a desk. "Hi, I'm Burl", smiled the gentleman, "Welcome to the
    wonderful world of make-believe".

On an information stand Albert found a book, in actual fact it was a 
siliconback (old word: paperback) book "We apologize for the inconvenience 
- the seventh in the hitch-hiker trilogy" which came out in Megapan 
siliconbacks in the late 2009s. A lot of the updates were lost in
transfer due to virtual addresses - I mean REAL virtual addresses - where
in fact a whole DECnet area could just have been the figment of a Vogon's
imagination.
Nevertheless, lots of information about VMS V13.0 got through and Albert's
attention was drawn to various topics:

o SSE (Speech sensitive editor)
  This editor even accepted the baby babble of a 5 month old and transformed 
  it into a beautifully structured 7th generation query language.

o FORTRAN VIII
  Real programmers could of course downgrade this compiler to look like a
  IV version. But alas they were by this time a nearly extinct race but very
  rich as 1966 Snoopy calendars on original 12" print-outs were being auctioned
  at Sotherby's for phenominal sums.

o VDB (Virtual data-base)
  This data-base could be spread over any number of DPUs (Decentralized
  processor units) and used the neat technique of double-checking all 
  transactions made by non-DP personnel and automatically doing a "roll-back" 
  instead of a "commit".

o HPC (Hierarchical print controller)
  This hardware was designed specially to cope with state-of-the-science 
  SOL (speed of light) laser printers (in fact there was no print but the
  name "printer" remained for nostalgic reasons). These printers could print
  upside-down as well as inside-out and even had fonts for the Vogon alphabet,
  which is quite amazing as the Vogons didn't even know they had an alphabet.
  A lot of young programmers tried reproducing 1966 Snoopy calendars and 
  flooding the market with frauds so that eventually the data protection bill
  had to be ammended.

This is all I can remember at the moment as my one and only copy unfortunately 
got sent to my last virtual address (NOFIXEDABODE::) which had a virtual 
forwarding address which couldn't be interpreted by the GALACTICAL_POSTMASTER 
as this software was still part of DECmail.

Albert was just putting the siliconback back on the shelf when the girl on the
switchboard said:
"Call for you. Have a nice day".
Albert went over to the phone and a voice said ...

"This is James. Remember me?"

Albert was startled at the monotone voice on the other end. "But you're DEAD!"

"Well, its like this..." said James, "Yasee all that electronicalific
stuff that your a messin with uh... they can tap your brain, see. From all of
your recollections of me and that kinda stuff they can build an duplicate of
me but in silicon, of course. My essence is sitting on one of these RA955-J
disk things awaiting silicon transformation. I'm on unit number 23495ufx
interleaved with parts of Marty Feldman and Hitler."

Albert looked around frantically. How could this be? It was all too much for
Albert's feeble brain to handle. "I must find a meaning for all of this!" he
pronounced.

A small sphere floated into view and a voice from within it said "Grand
weather for a sail today folkes. Please board the orbiter on the vestibule
outside of the main portal."

Albert was about to ask the sphere a question when he spied a large cubical
cabinet with many cables leading to it.  The cube was iredescent and seemed to
be sort of throbbing....

A sign on the side of the pulsating cube (with glowing green letters) said...

   
    
    " Nostalgia Trips, Inc."
    
    Albert hung up the phone and wandered to what appeared to be the
    door of the machine. As he approached, a voice enquired "Hi Albert,
    Want to see a programmer entering code through keys on the front
    of the computer? Want to taste Real Coke? How about the chance to
    read a real book made of paper?"
    
    Albert was minussed (non-plussed). He stepped in, and before he
    could do much he found himself dragged into a large leather armchair.
    
    He sat down and a book thrust into his hand. It was entitled
    "Opposites".He opened it at page
   1 one. He started to read.
    
    
    "It was a bright and calm day....... 

    " ... Janice remained upright in the pleasant sunshine as she
    confidently strode through the flowers at her feet.  `It must be
    near here!', she knew excitedly, as she continued along the bright
    [s]unlit avenue. She loosened the collar of her blouse, successfully
    allowing the sunshine to reach her already tanned shoulders.
    Then, slowly ..."

    "...through the shadows of the First Bank of Owego, slithered a
    bear of a man, Chester Z. Arthur.  He came up silently and noticed
    behind Janice, and tapper her on the shoulder.  When she turned
    around to see who it was, Chester quickly ran round to the other
    side so that she would not see him.  As he did so, however, he looked
    up just in time to see, falling through the friendly skies,..."

   ... the spaceship that had captured Elvis! The guitar-shaped craft landed
   softly on the grass without a sound.
   
   Chester was annoyed by this turn of events; he had hoped to overwhelm
   Janice when he revealed his incredibly huge bottle cap collection to her.
   He secretly wondered if Elvis or the Russians were attempting to get his
   collection...
   
   A horde of drooling Russian scientists came scurrying out of the trees and
   from behind rocks. One was pulling a huge camera mounted on a small wagon.
   Chester ran to the camera and grasping it in his huge paws began to pump it
   like a concertina. "Nyet! NYET!" shouted a bald, portly bespectacled
   Russian as he tried to wrestle the nearly ruined camera from Chester.
   
   Janice caught a glimpse of Elvis in the spaceship door. "Hey honey, where
   have you been all my life?" asked Elvis as a dwarf-like Russian proceeded
   to check the interior of the craft for water-closets and subversive
   literature.
   
   Chester let out a howl as the bald scientist blasted him in the face with a
   fire extinguisher.
   
   Janice headed towards the bank thinking that she would seek shelter from
   the bizzare events that were unfolding before her. "Hey hon- we can get a
   pizza later, OK?" shouted Elvis as she turned her back on the spacecraft.
   
   Chester was attempting to inflate the camera bellows by blowing through the
   smashed lens, but his attempts were futile- the Russian had blasted 12
   holes through the bellows with AK47 Elvis-Spaceship assult rifle.
   
   Janice was about to enter the bank when someone inside opened the door and
   held if for her, motioning her to enter. To Janice's surprise, the person
   holding the door was....

	Little did Janice know that the person who was holding the door
was, none other than Morton Downey Jr.  "Oh no!", Janice shreeked.
"Come here so we can start the show", said M.D.  Janice, looking
perplexed whispered, "But what is the show about, at a bank"?  "Janice,
I thought you knew, this is a 'body bank', where people can get frozen till
a later time in their life!  Moron."  Exclaimed Morton.  "We are going to
discuss the morality of the human race playing God."

	Meanwhile, outside, Chester has stopped trying to blow up the camera
and has grabbed the AK47 Elvis-Spaceship assault rifle and has turned on
the Russians.  Chester accidently stepped on one of the Russians and was
busily at work prying the Russian out from between his toes with the rifle.
It appears that while Chester was prying, the Russian was spilling his guts,
not literally, about why they were there, to Chester.  Of course Chester
can talk and understand all of this; Chester has learned that the Russians
are really there to find out the secret of the 'Body Bank'.  Chester finally
got the Russian out of his toes and was busy about trying to save Janice
from the fate worse than death....Morton!

	Let's see now, Elvis....Oh yeah, Elvis is at the bank because he
has learned through the grapevine that another Superstar has decided to
freeze himself, and Elvis wanted to visit him after 30 years of freezing.
We all know who this could be.  Oh, I don't know. Could it be...


******************************************************************************
Will Janice be subjected to Morton's show, or will someone save her?
What is Chester going to do with the Russians once he has them cornered?
Is Elvis really going to visit?


Stay tuned for more information...
    

...about this continuing saga.

Meanwhile in the bank Chester asked if they accepted travellers cheques.
"Yes" replied the clerk who was behind the bullet proof glass. Chester stopped 
a traveller and took his cheques.
"How would you like to be paid out?" inquired the clerk. "Vogon dollars, Yeti II
shillings..?".

He was interrupted by Elvis who produced a platinum American Express card with a
neat black border, signifying that not only had the card expired but the owner 
as well. "That'll do nicely" said Janice.

Morton was just driving off in the violet Maserati when the Russians noticed a 
small sticker on the rear bumper which said "My other car's a Porsche 959".
Unfortunately this translated to "Rocky XXVII showing at the Odeon" in russian
and they went off in search of the cinema.

Albert was getting fed up of this soap opera and after switching several 
different stations from "Sky channel" to "Milky Way TV" to "Castor and Pollux 
the twin stations" he decided to turn the box off. He was just cleaning his 
teeth when there was a knock at the back door ...

    ... of the Mill.  Quickly unwinding through several stack frames,
    Albert realised he had fallen asleep while reading the book
    "Opposites".  He closed it, placed it back on the shelf, and hurried
    to the back door to see who it could be.  He opened the door, to
    be confronted by a large shiny android. "Govorit po Russki, tovarich?",
    asked the android, politely.  Albert noticed that the robot was not
    speaking English.  Making use of his obvious intelligence, Albert
    noticed a switch on the android's chest.  Around the switch, he
    made out several words, most of which were unintelligible.  One,
    however, registered as the name of his mother tongue.  He clicked
    the switch to this position, and was surprised to hear the robot
    say ...

    
    "...... Absolutely aaaaaawwwwwwwwfulllll" in a deep and depressing tone .
    
    
    
    

    Noticing another familiar language, he moved the switch to Italian.
    
    The robot didn't say much, at first, but merely started waving its
    arms about until it looked as though they would fall off. This is
    fun, Albert thought. He braved the swinging arms and moveds the
    switch to OZ.
    
    Yair Well G'day sport. Fair dinkum no worries have a tinnie and
    chuck another shrimp on the barbie." The robot looked at Albert
    who looked as though he couldn't believe his ears. "Don't come the
    raw prawn with me, yer new chum, or I'll have to sort yers out."
    With that the robot gave a technicolour yawn. Albert quickly leaned
    forward and moved the switch to.......
    
    

    ...off.  Albert wanted a piece of Ken Olson gum.  He really didn't
    known where Ken's office was so he went down the stairs, up the stairs,
    over the tables, under the tables, up the elevators, down the
    elevators, through the doorways, and finally he found the office he was
    looking for.  It was locked.  So, he went down the stairs, up the
    stairs, over the tables, under the tables, up the elevators, down the
    elevators, until he got back to the android.  He switched the android
    to on and told it to follow him.  He went down the stairs, up the
    stairs, over the tables, under the tables, up the elevators, down the
    elevators, through the doorways, and finally arrived back at the
    office.  The android was able to open the locked door with Elvis's
    platinum American Express card with the neat black border.  When they
    opened the door they were surprised to find... 

    ...that it was empty! It was past 7 o'clock, but it's a well known fact
    that no Digital employee ever goes home before 8. Ken's absence
    was remarkable, not to mention, bad for morale. "Still", thought
    Albert, "it is getting dark" and a glance out the window revealed
    that storm clouds were gathering on the horizon. "Perhaps Ken doesn't
    like to drive in the rain."
    
    He started looking for the gum when he noticed that the bookshelf
    was not flush against the wall. A closer examination revealed a
    secret passageway behind it. Albert had the robot turn on his
    headlights and they went in. Almost immediately they discovered...
    

... that they were in a gangway leading to a throbbing Boeing 747 at Logan 
airport in Boston. They handed over the boarding tickets for the business class
as they'd been upgraded from economy due to Elvis's platinum Frequent Flier card
which had 50,000,000 miles credited.

A voice came over the intercom.
"Hi I'm Jeannie, I'm you're flight attendant for today. You're on board Delta 
Airlines bound for San Francisco via Chicago. If your travel plans for today do
not include either of these two cities would you please leave the aircraft 
within the next four minutes. Thank you. Cool Breeze. Have a nice day".

A bearded quaker in his late sixties accompanied by three wives and seventeen 
children got up and left mumbling something about a Durex convention in Salt 
Lake City. This gave our travellers a bit more room to spread out and enjoy the
flight.

After the take-off the pilot's voice came over in a long Kentucky drawl.
"Hi folks. Hope you're enjoying the flight. I've been with this airline for 
quite a while. In fact ever since I took Buddy Holly on his last flight. Just
kidding folks. On a more serious note would any of you who have drinks in front
of you please hold them as I'm going to bank this crate 45 degrees so you can 
all get a good view of Niagara Falls at 30,000 feet."

Then the film came on. First a message from the censorship board:
"This film has been censored due to the fact that passengers could come from 
many walks of life, be any age, colour, creed, nationality, religion (including
the church of England) or sex. All violent, pornographic, lesbian, homosexual 
etc. scenes have therefore been removed."

This in fact reduced "Deep throat" starring Linda Lovelace to 27 seconds (which 
was the time it took to display the actors and "The End" sign). British airways
had resorted to showing "The woodentops" and "Bill and Ben" had been completely
banned. A "Tom and Jerry" cartoon started which didn't include any violence or 
scenes where the house-keeper appeared.

Jeannie was just coming around with the food when ...

    ...the plane jerked violently, causing large amounts of some
    unidentifiable green semi-solid to go unexpectedly flying across
    the air headed straight for Albert.  Just as the android began
    vigorously scrubbing the stuff off of Albert, the pilot's voice
    came on: "Sorry about that folks.  Just a little turbulance, nothing
    to worry about.  Please watch now as the stewardess at the front
    of your cabin demonstrates the emergency landing proceedures.  Also,
    for those of you flying business or first class, free wills are
    available to be stored in the fireproof safe at the rear of the
    plane."
    	"We are pleased to report that we should have, in the next couple
    of minutes, a cure for any of you who have a fear of death.  Be
    seeing you!"
    	As the sound of a man jumping out of the plane with a parachute
    filled the cabin, the android noticed...

    ... a smartly dressed, middle (-to-well) -aged lady in the next
    seat.  "Buon giorno!" said the android, hoping to strike up a
    conversation.  The lady reached over, and turned the knob to
    "New England genteel". "Hello," she said, "I'm J.B. Fletcher.  I've
    asked my script writers to give you people a hand with the storyline."
    
    Albert's heart sank, as he heard this.  Now the plot was going to
    get *really* silly ...

    ..as Albert was sure he could see the edge of a strangely glowing
    large metallic object hovering above the now downward plunging
    airplane. J.B.Fletcher reached into her cabin bag and pulled out
    what looked like a small portable 'phone. She pressed a few buttons,
    and muttered some words that sounded very much like "beam us up,
    Scottie!" and next a strange glow surrounded J.B.Fletcher,
    Albert, Jeannie and the android. 
    	Albert closed his eyes due to the momentary massive pain in
    his stomach that is always caused by the Mark IV matter transmitter
    and when he opened them again he saw....
     

... that he had been transported to a small, featureless room. A wobbly table
stood in the corner with a small device atop the scratched surface. 

A hollow voice said "PLUGH".

Also in the room was

A small axe.

An empty bird cage.

More curious than cautious, Albert walked closer for a look at the device...
it was quite dusty. It appeared to be like a televison set with an
alpha-numeric keyboard attached.  As he withdrew is handkerchief from his
pocket a coin fell to the floor.

Using his handkercheif he wiped the layer of dust from the screen and the
plastic housing of the device. Painted on the plastic housing was the word

          |   |   |   |   |   |                 VT05
        d | i | g | i | t | a | l               Video
          |   |   |   |   |   |                 Terminal

Wiping the dust from the face revealed the following glowing messages:

        >
        You are in a twisty little maze of passages, all different.
        You are in a little twisty maze of passages, all different.
        You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different.
        Your lamp is growing dim.
        >

He sensed that he was supposed to enter somthing on they keyboard. It all had
a familar feeling to him... but what it was, he was not sure.

He pulled up a chair and sat down in front of the device.

He thought for a moment and then using one finger he carefully typed the
command....

    Set host Vending Machine...
    
    Nothing Happened....
    
    Then he wrote, Set host Building....
    
    An overpowering tingling sensation came over Albert, and 
    Suddenly (where have I heard thatbefore, thought Albert) a flash of light
    passed before Albert's eyes.....       
    
    As Albert's eyes slowly came into focus, he noticed that there was
    something on the floor.  He couldn't quite make it out, but he knew
    that he was no longer in the same place.  Suddenly.......

    a stone mosaic...
    
    "How archaic." he thought to himself.  He stumbled over a stone
    doorjamb entering the next room.  "Plover..." he swore silently
    to himself, his toe now throbbing wih pain.
    
    On the left hand wall was an inscription: AD 79.  A faint light
    was coming from somewhere up ahead.  Everything seemed INCREDIBLY
    dusty, and he wondered how long it had been since the cleaning service
    had gotten to this hole-in-the-wall.  The niche to which he was
    referring featured a fairly well-endowed goddess-figure, hands
    outstretched, palms up, in an action of supplication.  A continuous
    light poured fourth from the radiant crown she wore.  Beneath the
    statue was inscribed.....
    

    	"Gently, Tigger dear".
    
    	Being unable to make any sense of this directly, he started
    to examine the inscription on the left wall, hoping that this would
    explain things.

    Well, shore 'nuff it did.  Under the "AD 79" was a "Welcome to
    Pompeii".
    
    There was an eerie silence, punctuated only by the constant drip of
    water in the distance.  He reached down to briefly touch the statue,
    and the glow expanded to engulf himself and the statue in a tremendous
    flare of light.  A roar reached his ears, as if a thousand monsoons
    were sweeping past.  Then there was this strange crinkling sound, as if
    an octopus were unwrapping a bathtub wrapped in cellophane.  Then there
    was an ominous crunch/squelch, as of a square-wheeled steam-roller
    running over a street covered with hard-boiled eggs.  Then it was quiet
    again.  He blinked in the bright light, thanking heaven that a bizarre
    twist of plot hadn't put him through anything too weird in the
    underground remains of an ancient, far off city.  He began muttering
    under his breath, "This all seems like some awful, drawn out, fantastic
    story...the kind that could only be conjured up by several dozen fairly
    twisted individuals,"... 

    Which was, of course, a totally correct assumption.
    
    No sooner did he realize this awful truth than he also remembered
    where he had heard of Pompeii before.
    
    Volcanoes.
    
    He was sitting on top of a volcano.
    
    Red lava was already oozing through the wall behind the statue.
    
    In a moment it would burst out and . . .

    Arthur shook his head, trying to come to grips with the fact that
    this would be the end ... there was nothing he could do to escape
    the red hot lava.  As his head came to rest, someone was tapping
    him on the shoulder saying "Come on ya Pom, pay fer yer drinks will
    ya !"  He  was startled to find himself in a bar talking with an
    obviously Aussie bartender.  The bartender sensed Arthur's confused
    state and said "Hey mate, you just gotta lay off those ...
    

    ...kangaroos.  Keep foolin' around with kangaroos and before
    ya know it ya'll be hoppin' mad, madder than a March hare,
    madder than a hatter."
    
    "But I'm not fooling around with kangaroos," Arthur objected.
    
    "You don't have to tell me," the bartender assured him.  "Mum's
    the word."
    
    "You keep quiet about me Mum!" Arthur roared.
    
    The startled bartender backed away.  "Didn't mean nothin' by
    it, mate.  Interest you in a little game?"
    
    "Game?" repeated Arthur blankly.
    
    "Private."  The bartender winked and nudged him in the ribs. "For
    special customers only.  Right back here."
    
    Arthur followed.  I suppose the scene will shift just as I
    go through that door again, he mused, and prepared himself
    for the melting of another world.
    
    
    
    

    To his surpise, Alfred found himself in what appeared to be a game
    room. There were a number of people, dressed in evening wear, gathered
    around a roulette table. He noticed a young couple who looked very
    worried as they placed a large number of chips on the table. The
    croupier looked up at a man in a white tux. The man nodded briefly. The
    croupier spun the wheel and much to their obvious delight the young
    couple won. 

    The man in the white tux said something to them and left the room.
    Another man in a uniform Alfred didn't recognize followed him out.
    Alfred decided to follow too. 

    The door led not outside, but to another bar. This one looked
    completely different from the one through which he had entered. It had
    mostly white walls with numerous arches. Bead curtains hung from some,
    and with the exotic plants and elaborate wood carvings, gave the place
    a middle-eastern look. This was enhanced by the appearance a waiter
    wearing a fez, but contradicted by the black man, also wearing a white
    tux, who sat at a piano singing an old american tune. 

    Alfred ordered a gin and tonic from the waiter, then walked over to the
    piano and said to the singer... 
    

    "D'ya know where I  can find some live music around here?"
    
    The reply came smoothly from practised lips, placing Albert in the
    mental predicament of parting the carpet pile, or jumping up and
    down to see where he was.
    
    "When I get through typing this letter, I'll tell ya"
    
    Albert resumed his posture and regained his composure. All at once
    he heard a strange chord. 
    "That's it, the missing chord. Dinka dink a Dinka doo" he hummed
    softly to himself, "Hey play that again Henry," he remarked to the
    joanna player.
    
    "Do remove yourself in an unsmooth manner", the pianist reparteed.
    
    Albert removed himself to the other side of the smoky bar.. at
    least Albert presumed it was the other side, for having travelled
    a couple of feet, the smoke hid the pianist from view. It doesn't
    take much smoke to hide a twelve inch pianist, mused Albert.
    
    Before he could determine the ramifications of this last thought,
    a message wrapped carefully around a twelve foot high african elephant
    appeared before his eye. Grabbing it with his left hand, whilst
    fending off the elephant with his right, Albert read the poser.
    
    What is the difference between an african elephant and an Indian
    elephant?" it read.
    
    "About 2000 miles" Thought Albert. "Correct" said a high pitched
    squeaky voice from over Albert's right shoulder. It was.......

    ...Herbert Morgenstein, the one and only German leprechaun.  He
    quickly magiked himself down from Albert's shoulder to the ground
    and said, with a mock-Irish accent which combined with the natural
    German accent and English words to come out sounding vaguely like
    a Bulgarian mouse injected with Pop-Tart fillings "Congratulations,
    sir, you have just won the big contest.  And tell him what he won,
    Don..."
    	A voice, seemingly coming from nowhere, barked out: "Yes, Albert,
    you have won three all expense paid, low calorie, potentially organic
    wishes."
    	Herbert continued "...thank you Don", seemingly never having
    dropped his prior conversation in a way which suggested that he'd
    been doing this bit a little too long.  "So, Al, what'll it be?
    Money?  Women?  Oversized potatoes?"
    	"No," Albert replied, "for my first wish I would like...

    a dozen more wishes...
    
    "Hey, that's not going by the book..."
    
    "Tough luck, I need to have something going for me what with all
    this phasing around from place to place.  I feel like a ping-pong
    ball in an interdimensional tournament."
    

    "I wish James were here" Albert thought.
    
    And then James was there. James was pretty mad at Albert for killing
    him. He grabbed a handy barstool and beat Albert to death.
    
    "Revenge is sweet" James chortled. Unfortunately, that was a magic
    phrase.
    
    James (you guessed it) suddenly found himself in a small room with two
    doors. In the room was a large mirror and a trunk. 
    
    James had a flashlight and bottle of green liquid.
    
    He looked in the mirror and noticed...

    ....That he was no longer a MAN!  Yes, he was now a woman.  Not
    a bad looking one at that, he thought.  James...er Janet?  Oh I
    donno, well call 'her' Jane, yes Jane.  Jane looked into the mirror
    and noticed that she was a rather muscular woman, resembling that
    cartoon caracter.....um...Shera.  Jane had always liked that show.
     Shera was always winning battles against warthog like beings and
    was invinceable.
    
    After a long wait, James, now Jane wondered what sort of twisted
    goofball would do this sort of thing to his/her character.  Had
    to be someone that had a severe identity problem he...er she thought.
    
    Looking around the room, Jane noticed the two doors that were to
    her left.  One had a human like figure on it and the other one had
    to be nothing more that three feet tall at best.  Figuring that
    she couldn't really fit through the small one, Jane decided to enter
    the other one.
    
    "Darn these writers", thought Jane.  "Why can't I have a normal
    life like that Indiana guy".
    
    Just as Jane was about to grab holds of the door knob.........

    from somewhere above, as if by magic, she heard a howling, and a
    man in a felt hat, bullwhip at his waist, 3-days stubble on his
    face, swung in on a huge fine.
    
    "You rang?" he quipped.
    
    "Indiana Jones...Someday I knew you'd come walking through my door..."
    she murmured as his shadow rose on the wall behind her.  
    
    He gestured at the larger door, and together they opened it and
    went through.  Both stumbled.  It led to a set of stairs.  They
    went down....waaaay down....
    

    ...until they finally came to rest at the bottom on a cushiony soft
    stone floor.  Jane slowly recovered her senses, and went over to
    Indy to see how he was doing.  He was already up and looking around
    for someone to shoot.  Jane thought this a little odd, since he
    had just fallen down a rather long, twisty set of stairs, and said
    so.
    	"I sometimes do my own stunts" was his only reply, as he continued
    to look around.
    	Jane decided that she had had a long day, what with being
    resurected, killing albert, and suddenly changing into a woman and
    all, and so she decided to sit down and rest for a second.
    Unfortunately, she didn't notice the...

    ...slavering grinch, who was busy devouring unsuspecting noters
    replying to the "dark & stormy night" saga.                       
                                                      ______
                                                  ___/      \__
                                                _/             \__
                                               /                  \
    __________________________________________/                    \__________
                                                        ^           
                                                        |
    					[grinch bite-mark]

    At that precise moment, a new noter came tumbling down the self-same
    stairs. 
    "Is this the Home Sattelite Dish conference?", he asked.
    "Nope", said the grinch.
    "Thanks", said the noter, and walked down a previously
    unremarked passageway never to be seen or heard of again.

    The grinch burped and turned around, planning to get back onto the
    Ethernet.  The assortment of unsavory puns, stale jokes, and
    overheated cliches he had just eaten was already giving him a bad
    bellyache, and his head was starting to hurt. 
    
    He burped again.  No, this meal was not going to stay down. 
    
    He gripped the side of the passageway and barfed.  Out came a
    flood of mangled, partly digestible words -- sscanf, isatty,
    strcat, sbrk. 

    The grinch screamed and ran up the stairs.  The mass of bytes
    poured into the network, searching for a system to possess. 

    Jane (or was it James?) seeing the torrent of bytes decided that
    this was something that s(he) could take care of since her recent
    translocation from the databanks of some VAX computer in Massachussets
    to this new android body.  With a single bound she jumped in front
    of the torrent of bytes, quickly she sized up the situation and
    realised why the grinch could not hang on to this data.  It had
    all been translated to EBCDIC.
    
    It was plain that this data must not reach the Ethernet ...  It
    would be the end of the net as we know it.  "Quick !!" she screamed
    somebody find a MOP

    Immediately a small Malicious Oriental Programmer appeared, with
    slanted eyes and a flow chart stencil.
    
    "I could convert his into Kanji" he said, "or I could reprogramme
    you!"
    
    Jane/James recoiled in horror. She had a hatred of bugs, and was
    sure he would introduce some oriental ones if he reprogrammed her,
    Would Kanji be worse for Easynet than EBCDIC? Could she wrest his
    stencil off him in time?

      "Here's today's newspaper," said a familiar voice, ignoring the
      notes collision (having gone through this once before only a few
      minutes ago, in a slightly different time stream).  "You can use
      it to mopp upp the bytes iff you know the proper tune." 
      
      "Strange," Jane thought, "I can hear the doubled final
      consonants."  And she thought about what the proper tune might
      be.
      
      Just then, there appeared, as if by magic coincidence, an old,
      vintage 1950 TV and a couple of puppets were singing, "...
      R-A-double-G, M-O-double-P, rag mop, didda-de-ya-de-da-da,
      rag mop."  Beany and Cecil, the seasick seaserpent, suddenly
      looked out the TV screen; Cecil saw the seemingly random bytes
      and became not only seasick, but EBCDIC-sick as well; barfed
      direct�y onto the MOP; and then Jane ...

    ...remembering the theory of nagetive reality inversions, started
    singing along.  To her suprise, her voice was a beautiful soprano,
    since she had always as James had a tenor voice that was always
    a quarter step flat.  Getting into to the song, temporarily ignoring
    the Cecil-barf, Jane in-a-rapid-manner-suggesting-the-use-of-that-
    nasty-eight-letter-s-word found herself in front of a large number
    of cameras, most of Japanesse make but a simgnificant minority clearly
    having been made in Montana.  She quickly surmised that she was
    in...

    an important press conference.  Smiling into all the cameras, she
    murmured those infamous words.... "no comment"
    
    Turning on her spiked heel, she whirled out of the courtroom and
    proceeded on to Denny's, therein to order a large slice of cheesecake
    to calm her clamoring nerves.  What would she do about the will?
    She did not know, but of one thing she was sure....as both the living
    survivors (James/Jane) of uncle Wilhelm Von Stricktenbach, she was
    sure to get the lion's share of the Famous Von Stricktenbach Gem
    Collection, not to mention the secret recipe to Wilhelm's Infamously
    Delicious and Addictive Chocolate Chip Cookies....
    

      ... and EBCDIC-encoded Run-On Sentences with real chocolate
      dots over the mathematically imaginary 'i's.  Clearly, this
      thinking wasn't at all rational; in fact, it was a bit ab-
      surd, especially what with all the free radicals hereabouts
      nowadays.
      
      Jane-who-once-was-James thought that she should have spiked
      the punch rather than her heel.  

      The cheesecake seemed to help her.  Her clamoring nerves were
      calmed, and she thought she could think clearly now.  Then
      she thought that she wasn't thinking about the will at all,
      but rather she was thinking about how much more clearly she
      was now thinking.  Then she realized that she was only partially
      right:  while she was thinking about how much more clearly
      she was now(then) thinking, she had obviously been thinking
      about thinking about the will.   She realized that all this
      thinking about thinking about thinking could cause her to go
      into infinite regression.  Alas, there was a new thought. 
      Ah!  She was thinking about infinite regression.  No, she was
      thinking about thinking about infinite regression.  *sigh*
      Is there no end to this?
      
      Yes.
      
      All she has to do, she remembered, was to remember to think
      about thinking about crossing another note-interface, whatever
      that was.

    The bus driver really should have seen her as she stepped into 
    the road, deep in thought. Truth was, he hadn't been himself lately.
    His analyst couldn't make out exactly WHO he was, but he had enough
    leads to suggest he wasn't the Thadeus T. Wannabacker who had hired
    him. "So what?" thought the analyst at the end of the day. "So long
    as his cheques are good, who cares?" 
    
    Patient reader, you and I care -- because at the precise moment
    that Jane/James loomed into view across the hood of the bus, the
    driver was in fact a passenger sitting four rows down on the nearside.
    And HE didn't have a chance of seeing her...

    ... screaming in horror as she crashed face-first through the
    windshield of the bus.
    
    Several days later she awoke in the hospital, her face wrapped in
    thick bandages.  She wondered if the plastic surgeons had done a
    reasonable job reconstructing her face after whatever it was that
    brought her to this sterile, white room.  She wondered who she was,
    the wondering made just that much worse not even remembering what
    she looked like before.  Images of Eastern-bloc women's olympians
    filled her mind, as if in a previous life she had been somehow less
    of a woman.
    
    Months of difficult therapy followed, until finally the day arrived
    when she would find out what she looked like, and hopefully remember
    who she was.  The doctors arrived and removed the bandages slowly
    and carefully.  Jane grabbed a mirror and gasped when she saw...

    James standing behind her, clearly reflected in the mirror.
    She vaguely remembered the slip that launched a thousand faces..
    

    "Wait a minute!" Jane shreiked, now realizeing that she was James
    and that therefore it was fully impossible for him to be standing
    behind her.
    
    "Don't worry" James said, rather unassuringly.  "You see, Dr.
    Doonothing is a specialist in genetics.  He decided it would be
    fun to clone you, and somehow your genes remembered me, so here
    I am.  And now I'm afraid I'll have to kill you."
    
    "But why?"
    
    "Well, you see, my dear, I am planning to write a book about our
    life, and I really don't want to share the profits with you, even
    though you are me."
    
    James picked up the scalpel at Jane's bedside, and lunged at her.
    Jane, however, was to quick for him.  She ran over to the fruit
    bowl which had been so neatly set up by one of the nurses, grabbed
    a banana, pealed it, and threw the peal at James feet.  James stepped
    on the peal, slipped, dropped the scalpel, and promptly landed on
    it.  As Jane went over to make certain that she was safe, she heard
    his final words: "I'll be back...".  Somehow, the way she knew her/his
    life had been going, this wouldn't particularly suprise her.
    
    	Meanwhile, 17% of the way around the world, Arthur McGee was
    trimming his bushes when...

    ...James, swearing wildly at the way Notes -- and Jane -- had
    treated him, crashed down from nowhere, scalpel still protruding
    from his ample behind, mashing the roses as he flailed to his
    feet.
    
    "You helped her!" he roared at the astonished Arthur.
    
    "Her?" blubbered Arthur.  "You mean Mother's . . . "
    

    "Now now!" interjected James. "I'm no mean anything. Now help me
    off with this scalpel and then put 'em up and come out fighting."
    
    "I was going to say 'Mother's Ruin was to blame for the accident"
    said Arthur, adding "That's Gin, in case you didn't know."
    
    "What accident?" asked James.
    
    "The one where the driver who was a passenger killed Jane, and she
    ended up in the same Hospital where you were having treatment for
    your -- um -- thingy, you know."
    
    "You mean he was drunk?" asked James.
    
    "Certainly. A surgeon of his standing wouldn't have made a mistake
    like that f he was sober."
    
    At that precise moment, James looked down to discover the horrible
    consequences of the surgeon's lunchtime session at the hospital
    where he was when Jane turned up.
    
    "See?" said Arthur. "That scalpel's the least of your troubles..."

    For there, fresh from a Rdb course was a twelve inch pianist sitting
    on his right foot. It waved to him  and uttered a statement in embedded
    DML.
    
    James wondered what it all meant... Surely this could not be happening
    to hem (or was it hir?).. James quickly kicked out with his right
    foot. There was an ominous crash as a small baby grand rolled off
    his left foot, where it had been unnoticed  in the excitement.
    
    Dropping to his knees in abject terror, Arthur prayed fervently
    and swigged from his bottle of mother's ruin that he kept for such
    an occasion, carefully secreted in the left handle of his pruning
    shears. "Oh my, Oh my" he said, as a previous existence passed before
    his eyes. He suddenly felt like a salad.
    
    "What's it like to be drunk?" James asked in a small voice.
    
    "Why don't you ask a glass of water" replied the pianist , who wanted
    to show off his high level of erudition.
    
    "Play that past me one more time" said James who was becoming totally
    confused.
    
    When the very moment came that the plot became totally absorbed
    into utter and inconceivable drivel,  Jane arrived.
    
    " "Oh my, Oh my" said Arthur , as a previous existence passed before
    his eyes again. He suddenly felt like a fruit salad.
    
    Jane spoke softly.
    
    "Can I fix you a drink, Tarzan? .. and did you have to bring Cheetah
    into the garden?"
    
     "Why not, it's MY garden!" said Arthur feeling that things were going
    from bad to verse. "And I'm not Tarzan, I'm Arfer" 
    
    Arthur had not been able to say his name correctly since a schoolboy
    prank went horribly wrong when he was 32. The exact details remained
    a secret, but the village gossips suggested that it was something
    to do with.......
                                            

    ...egg salad and one live tuna.  This rumor had never been verified,
    though, and Arthur himself never revealed what had happened.
    
    	For what seemed like seconds, James, Jane, and Arthur stood
    in stunned silence.  Then James shifted his weight to his right
    leg.  Again, the three stood without making a sound.  Then Arthur
    starting moving his hand ever so slowly to his front right hand 
    pants pocket, from where he pulled out a small toothbrush.  The
    noteworthy triumvirate then proceeded to, in stereotypical mouse-
    like fashion, continue there noiselessness while carefully ballancing
    themselves on two limbs commonly referred to as legs.
    
    	Finally, James said, "Oh, **** this," pulled out a small pistol,
    and shot both Jane and Arthur dead.  Thus restored again to his
    rightful place as hero, he headed out towards the west, where he
    soon came upon...
    
    This interuption is not a part of the story, and should not be
    considered as such.  Anyway, for no particularly good reason (it
    was there), I've gone through all the entries up to this one and
    have combined and roughly edited them into a relatively (as compared
    to their present form) smoothly flowing story.  If anyone wants a copy,
    send mail to me (STAR::HUBER) and I'll mail one along.  One size
    fits all.

    a horse awaiting his exit from the hospital.  In fact there were
    no cars in the car park, just lots of horses all tied up, patiently
    waiting their owners.  There was a even a girl, dressed as what
    James associated with the old movies, a cowgirl, wandering around
    forking bales of hay in front of the horses, and from time to time
    hooking a bag of oats over the animals' heads.
    
    James, having only seen these animals used for transport in the
    movies struck up a conversation with the girl.  The gist of the
    conversation being how to drive this beast.  The girl, not in the
    least phased by James' (no nit alerts here please - please imagine
    your mechanism for making this a possessive -) ) ignorance of the
    fact that cars had vanished from the face of the earth in this,
    the Post Petroleum Era.  In fact this was some 150 years ago, and
    no scientist really came up with a viable replacement, so everyone
    had started to use the horse.
    
    James climbed aboard his beast.  What was it the girl had called
    it ? A golden roan ?  Anyway, James got on and did a few loops of
    the car ... or rather horse park, and realised he felt rather
    comortable sitting up here.
    
    Time to return home, thought James.  Time to get out of this mad
    sequence of events that had started on that dark stormy night God
    only knows when ago.  James recognised that home was to the west
    of this hospital ... at least the building had not changed.  The
    sun  was sinking low in the west, and James rode off heading towards
    the sunset humming some old song he remembered from the old movies...
    
       Happy Trails to you, until we meet again,
         Happy trails to you ......

    G'day,
    This too is not part of the plot. I too was thinking of making this
    into a book... but a course intervened and you beat me to it....
    so since I cannot mail to STAR::HUBER 'cos of login failure at remote
    node,
    
    Can I have a copy please?
    
    Derek
    
    
    
    Meanwhile...
    
    James heard a soft sound behind him, as of a spy creeping up to
    perpetrate some dastardly deed upon his personage. Carefully looking
    over his shoulder, James espied that the sound was not coming from
    such a doubtful, though totally appropriate character as a spy
    would be in the light of previous events , but that this horse that
    he now was riding was leaving a diorama of solid exhaust fumes behind
    it. Leastways that is what James thought they must be; for certainly
    a strange aroma was penetrating into his nostrils that was vaguely
    reminiscent of......

"Well? What do you think of it?" asked professor Esselbaum.
    
    "Hum. I don't want to discourage you, professor, and I know the
    opinion of a molecular biologist doesn't carry much theoretical
    weight in these matters, but I can't help feeling that the
    distinguished head of the department of applied semiology at this
    most prestigious of institutions has -- how might one put it --
    cocked it up."
    
    "Cocked it up?" asked the faintly bemuse professor E.
    
    "In a nutshell." answered doctor Schmidt.
    
    "In what way? I mean, could you be more precise?"
    
    "Well, I've only dipped into the works of the new Grammarians, of
    course. And I wouldn't say I was an expert in Proppian formalism,
    and I only have a smattering of Derridean deconstrutio.."
    
    "Yes yes, of course of course. But where did I go wrong?" interjected
    the increasingly impatient professor.
    
    "Now now, let's keep calm and review the situation over a pasta
    supper and an unfeasibly large amount of German beer."
    
    "O.K."
    
    The two men engaged in a brief but urgent disagreement over who
    had whose hat on the way out of the door. Finally, they set off
    in silence toward the pub (nothing like a pub really, but it milked
    the only aspect of its architecture that resembled an English pub
    -- its sign -- for all it was worth).
    
    It was a dark and stormy night, and the professor gathered his
    coat-collarabout his neck to stop the insistent rain pressing beneath
    his shirt-collar. Suddenly, he noticed that his colleague, Doctor
    Schmidt, had disappeared...

      Dr. Schmidt, having so quickly tired of the company of Prof.
      Esselbaum, ducked out of the rain into the cover of the stand
      of trees that the pair had been walking near.  He made his
      way a few yards down a slight incline until he came to a gate
      in a chain-link fence.  There was a sign "POSTED:  Trespassers
      will be violated."   He ignored it.  It was the entry to his
      own property.  [How convenient!]   
      
      He entered through the gate, continued walking down the slope
      to the tiny creek, where he got into his canoe and started
      paddling up-stream.  He never left his own property.  Suddenly
      [how else do things happen in this story?], Jane, accompanied
      by Prof. Esselbaum, appeared as if from nowhere, and each grabbed
      one of his paddles and ran off.
      
      "Rats," thought the doctor, "I'm up Schmidt's Creek without
      a paddle."

    Meanwhile, James continued clip-clopping along on his new mode of
    transport, rather miffed at being so rudely interrupted by this
    blatant non-sequitur.  He soon worked out the gear change mechanism:
    this appeared to be a three-speed version, walk, trot and canter. 
    He still hadn't found reverse . . .
    
    As he crested the brow of a hill, he could see a narrow creek down
    below.  A small boat appeared to be drifting with the current, and
    he could hear a faint voice calling "Hilfe mir!".  Quickly consulting
    his copy of "The Concise Heritage Dictionary of All Known Languages",
    he realized what was up.  Ramming the horse into overdrive, he galloped
    down the hill towards the creek.  As he approached the embattled
    figure, he realised what that familiar smell had been ...

    'Yes, that must be it', he thought to himself, in the process
    dislodging the rememberance of the smell, and almost knocking out
    his mental reminder about his dental appointment.
    
    	"Come on now, give me a hand!", he heard the voice call, jarring
    his attention back to the situation at hand and completely eliminating
    any chance he had of remembering to see Steve Filler, DDS.
    
    	"Wait a second, you weren't talking in English just a minute
    ago!?!", James replied.
    
    	Thirty seconds passed, and then the voice came back, "I want
    to buy your wife and pool umbrella, dangerously."
    
    	James retorted, "This is getting silly, now.  If you don't watch
    out, I'm going to have to get the silly police after you."
    
    	The voice came back, "Thank you for the spaghetti.  I'll treasure
    it organically."
    
    	"That's it.  I'm leaving.  This is just getting to silly."
    
  	As James started to head off again, he heard the voice faintly
    yelling, "Cheesecake and crackers, my ear makes for good towing."
    
    	Thinking to himself, in a slow and deliberate manner so as not
    to cause confussion, our hero decided that, to add meaning to his
    life, he must begin a quest.  First he thought about looking for
    the holy grail, but he turned that idea down thinking, 'No, I'll
    probably just end up meeting some particularly silly French-type
    people and not enjoying any of it.'  Then came a briliant idea:
    he would search for the Yellow Submarine Sandwitch!  'Yes!  Then,
    once I find it, I'll be famous and popular and can retire from these
    awful soap-operas!'
    
    	James had just headed off to look for the Yellow Submarine
    Sandwitch when he met up with...

    . . . a three-headed glovatch galumphing cheerfully along, its
    purple tail trailing behind it and its orange mane tossing in the
    wind.
    
    "Hi, guy, whatcha upto?" the glovatch's middle head greeted him
    cheerfully.  The left head appeared to be asleep.  The right
    head looked hungry.  It had teeth, too, James noticed, and
    moved to the animal's left side.  
    
    "I'm on a quest," he announced.
    
    "On a quest?" asked the puzzled glovatch, peering around James'
    feet.  "A quest is a good mount, but I fear you've lost yours."
    
    "No, I don't mean a quest, I mean a quest -- like a mission. Like
    the quest for the Holy Grail."
    
    "I wouldn't bother if I were you.  The Holy Grail is getting
    rusty -- can't even use it for toasts any more."
    
    "I know.  I'm not after the grail.  I'm in search of the Yellow
    Submarine Sandwich." 
    
    The glovatch stared in awe.  "The . . . the . . . yellow . . . "
    but he dared not name it.  "My God, man, that's  . . . "
    
    "I know," said James rather proudly.

    "It will be dangerous."
    
    "I know," said James, not quite so proudly.
    
    "Have you considered -- " here the glovatch dropped its voice to a
    whisper -- "That you may find it and discover that the yellow is
    MUSTARD?"
    
    James had not considered that possibity.  He . . . 

    decided to take time out and savour the thought. Hot and humid,
    the thought rolled around his mind; French moutarde, Deutches Mustartde
    English mustard, thousand island dressing...No No he had to keep
    his thought away from sex..,hot and spicy, ...
    
    
    Dragging his mind back to some level of questionable reality, he
    opened his mouth to speak. A gust of spice laden, garlic and chili
    conquering air came forth and bowled the glovatch over into a maze
    of limbs and heads. "Ooops , burp" said James by way of explanation.
    
    He realised he had a new weapon in his armoury - thought controlled
    breath. He decided to try it out on his horse. Thinking of sunny
    days in the hay, with clover being ravaged by bees in search of
    true nirvana, he breathed at the horse.
    
    It worked. The old nag rushed to his side and bit him.
    
    Grabbing the halter with his left hand, James mounted quickly and
    blowing a gentle thought of a carrot between the beast's ears,
    James rode off into the sunset.
    
    It was not long before James thoughts turned away from carrots.
    He began to think of his last conquest and the sweet smells of perfume
    and soap and talc and rouge and spaghetti marinara floated gently
    upon his nose. I'm getting hungry, he thought. He thought quickly
    of a pint of best and sure'nuff there was a wayside inn, waiting
    to slake his thirst and to satisfy his every hungered whim.
    
    He dismounted, tied his horse to a parking meter, put 4 sheckels
    in the slot and entered the inn.
    
    The scene before him was wonderous. There in the corner, wrapped
    in an elegant see through dryzabone oilskin raincoat was.....
                                              

    Brigitte Bardot - in all her kittenly coquette-ishness.  Her wide
    eyes beckoned to him, as she held forth an envelope.  She whispered
    between cherry-red pursed lips - "I hear you are looking for
    condiments".  He had to slap his mind (inwardly, of course) in order
    to prevent an unfortunate turn of verbal events, and then realized
    she was referring to the Yellow Submarine Sandwich.  What she had
    handed him was an ancient, yellowed map.  It seemed legitimate enough,
    particularly when he noticed the old tan stains in one corner, and
    the locations on the map including "Dijon Downs" and "the River
    Relish".  He grabbed a quick bite (of food, of course), and rapid
    gulp or two, and he was off - hoping he could catchup to his destiny
    - wishing only to be the hero of the day....
    

... he continued his quest for the Yellow Submarine Sandwich.

A voice came over the intercom.
"Hi Folks we're now approaching San Francisco airport. If you'd like to look out
of the starboard windows you'll notice a small Japanese submarine just leaving 
the harbour. Down by law. Have a nice day".

Jeannie was just coming around to check if everybody had fastened their seat
belts when James' mind slowly, like a snail taking a u-bend after 6 gin and 
tonics, grasped the connection. This was it. But where had the Yellow Submarine 
come from? A small sticker on the back of the submarine read:
		"We've been to Alcatraz and returned"

James rented an Avis Dodge Aries K car, the ones that only car rental companies
appear to buy, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. Parked near China town and 
took the tram to the harbour. Purchased a ticket for a tour of Alcatraz and a
little later was standing with a bunch of tourists on the small island in the
middle of the bay.

James wandered aimlessly around the prison with a Sony Walkman around his ears
describing Al Capone in a Californian drawl. The cells appeared to be divided 
into economy, business and first class. There were solitary confinement without
light, solitary confinement with light and solitary confinement with light and
radio plugs.
James entered an economy cell when suddenly ...

    ... he heard a swishing noise coming from the darkened corner of
    the cell.  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could see the swish
    was coming from about a metre of horsehair attached to his beloved
    mount!  Simultaneously, the horse recognised James.  "Nyet" it
    exclaimed joyfully, for it was a pure-bred Russian mare, and
    as we all know, that's the Russian for "Nay".  "How did you get
    here?", cried our hero.  "I flew, of course!", replied the horse,
    and James noticed for the first time the beautiful white wings.
    
    "I shall call you Peggy", said James (did he hear an awful groan?
    - no it was just the wind).
    
    Just then, he noticed a yellow stain on Peggy's lips ...
    

    "I've told you before, Quit smoking or you will not be able to fly!',
    James admonished his steed.
    
    "With what I've been smoking, I can fly anytime" said the horse.
    
    James stopped in his tracks.... smoke, horse. it hit him like a
    hammer. "I will crack down on you, you know, you dope, and put you
    out to grass!" 
    
    "Please!" muttered the brake.
    
    Leaping onto Peggy, James hurt himself and brought water to his
    eyes. Recovering his composure and bits of himself that were lying
    around (he had dropped his map and hat in the excitement) , he extolled
    his nag to flee the scene. "Steed, speed, up and away." Before the
    nag could accelerate past V1 en route to Vr and V2, the cell door
    clanged shut.
    
    Grabbing the nag's head, James applied the ear brakes and twisted  in
    the saddle to apply reverse thrust. "Aha," James mused to himself,"Aha,
    There's a tail to be tolled ".
    Leaping from the pony, he grabbed the mare's tail . A rushing wind
    could be heard and far away a bell rang. Weather or not, James was
    in this up to his millibars; for he was now under pressure to escape.
    Not wishing to cause an anti-cyclone to his quest, he occluded his
    front and raged like a tornado.
    
    "You rang?"
    
    A voice like a deep echo from the past crashed into James' left
    ear. 
    
    "gulp, grmph, shplurrt" sd Jms
    
    "Very well, Sir" and the owner of the voice, and the rear wall of
    the cell rotated oh, so slowly, in an anti-clockwise direction to
    reveal......                               ,
    

    ...a dribbling grinch.
    
    	"Say," said James, once he had regained his composure and his
    vowels, "you aren't by any chance related to the slavering grinch
    I ran into earlier, are you?"
    
    	"Well, yes, but don't spred it around."
    
    	"Why not?"
    
    	"You see, he's sort of the black sheep of the family.  I mean,
    most grinches are really nice creatures once you get to know us.
    George, which if I didn't already mention is his name, mine's
    Sylvesterine, how do you do, nice to meet you, and all that kind
    of good stuff, really has given us a bad name, what with his stealing
    Christmas and all, though like they always show you he changes his
    mind at the end every year.  He's been pulling that same old routine
    for years now; I can't believe the networks still interrupt their
    normal programming for it."
    
    	James, once he had managed to sort out the actual meaning of
    Sylvesterine's words from all the commas, decided that he would
    ask her to join on his escapade.  "Would you like to join Peggy
    and I on our search for the Yellow Submarine Sandwitch?"
    
    	"Well, I'd like to, but I do not work with any high flying horses."
    
    	"Don't worry, Peggy 'll stick to the ground if you'd prefer."
    
    	"I wasn't talking about the wings."
    
    	"Well, tell you what.  I think there's a ranch somewhere round
    here where we can drop Peggy off.  I think it's owned by some old
    actor or something."
    
    	"Retired?"
    
    	"Unfortunately not."
    
    	"O.K., you got a partner."
    
    	Thus it was that James and Sylvesterine headed off to look for
    the Yellow Submarine Sandwitch, after dropping Peggy off at a ranch
    where this rather fierce looking older woman starting yelling things
    like "Just Say No" and "Not Nyet, NO".  As they walked off, they
    could hear her faintly in the distance yelling something about the
    Betty Fjord center.  Looking at the map, they decided to first go
    to...

    Timbuctoo.
    
    Boarding the Metro, a carnet in each hand, the happy pair were soon
    absorbing the French atmosphere, the garlic, the anchovies, the
    aroma of fresh baked 'pain', apricot jam, croissants, newly percolated
    coffee and the local pissoir. 
    
    A small person tapped James on the knee. It was a metro Gnome. He
    was rocking side to side in three-four time, waltzing all over the
    place.
    
    "Er hello, are you Happy?" asked James. 
    
    "Yes, _that's_ why I had to get out of the bath... but that's another
    story. Anyway, I have a clue for you in your quest. Sind sie vertig?
    Etes-vous pret? Are you ready?" 
    
    "Hang on while I sharpen my pencil" muttered James producing a crayon.
    
    "GO",
    
    The gnome was frightened by this sudden order and promptly disappeared.
    
    Lying on the ground was a pool of water.
    
    Nearby, a small piece of paper fluttered in the breeze.
    
    Sylvia - for that is what James had decided to call her, since a
    speech impediment stopped him from  pronouncing the 'ine' on the
    end of her name - grabbed the papaer and read from it slowly..
    
    "Bread
    Milk,
    Sugar,
    pay papers."
    
    The problem is is that that's the clue. We must rush to.....
    
    
    
    

    ...Columbia, where, we should find a man who will give us clues
    in return for money (Bread) and cocaine (Milk --> Cow, Sugar -->
    Cane)"
    
    	James turned toward Sylvia and said, "You're a genius!  How did
    you ever figure that out?"
    
	"It was easy.  Metro Gnomes, unlike their cousins, the Rural
    Gnomes, have always believed there is no place like gnome.  And
    that gnome is where the heart is.  And that's phegnominal.  And..."
    
    	"Forget I asked."
    
    	This brief bit of really REALLY bad puns completed, our heros
    headed out for Columbia.  However, they got lost somewhere on the
    subway and ended up at Times Square, where they ran across...
    

    ...the path of a large bus hurrying to cut off a speeding taxi.
    
    "What do you suppose this was?" asked the ambulance attendant in
    charge of peeling Sylvia off the front of the bus. 
    
    The police officer looked it over without interest.  "Grilled
    grinch," she suggested.  "Happens all the time.  Sort of like
    lemmings."
    
    The ambulance attendant shook her head.  "What a ingnominous
    ending!" she exclaimed.
     
    Dead as he was, James couldn't help but groaning . . .

    ... as he thought of the aches and pains he could no longer feel.
    
    "Gosh," he thought, "life was never like this before!  Maybe now
    that I'm dead, I'll be better at living."
    
    Then he caught sight of Sylvia being rolled up and put in the back
    of the ambulance....

    and simultaneously was aware of his body being unceremoniously peeled
    from the pavement, folded in three and tossed into a litter.  They
    placed his severed limbs over his chest and carried him away.
    
    An intense longing overcame him as he watched himself disappear...

    ...And looking totally shocked, he told the fortune teller, "Thanks
    for the preview, I think I'll leave now and change my destiny."
    
    	After leaving Madame Xavier's fortune telling office, Jimmy,
    as he likes to be called, was walking down a dark alley.  To the
    left was a drunk with a remote control, his only prized possesion.
    Further down on the right was an opening that he could tell had
    to be a building entrance since there was light bleeding from around
    the door...wo wait...this is sounding like something I have heard
    before, or did I see it...hmmm.

    Walking toward the end of the alley towards the light and not really
    watching where he was going, Jimmy took a step towards the worst
    and fell into a space void.  Emerging on the other side of the void
    wearing a spacesuit with a warning light saying "LOW OXYGEN", Jimmy
    froze because there in front of him was...

    ...a rummaging grinch!

    	At this point, James woke up with a start.  At first he was
    very releaved, since he had only been dreaming.  Then he realised
    that although he had only been dreaming, and in fact nightmaring,
    about a scene from his childhood, and that he was in fact dead,
    and quite obviously a ghost.  At least, that is, quite obviously
    to James, not to any passerby (had there in fact been any), who
    would not have even noticed anything outside of a slight chill in
    the air an the smell of eggplant drifting from the heretofore
    unmentioned door that was in fact on James left from his point of
    view, or on his right from the point of view of the imaginary passerby
    who would be noticing the smell of eggplant had he or she been,
    in fact, passing by.  James at this point became very confussed,
    which is to say very confused mixed in with a generous peck of
    frustration, and held together by a delicious chocolate icing.
    
    	Knowing that the quest must be continued, James decided to wait
    to see how long it would take before some author would resurrect
    him, knowing also that it would only be a matter of time, and would
    probably be done in some unexplaned grand gesture that the authors
    he worked for thrived on.
    
    	Meanwhile, the long forgotten octopus had just undergone a brain
    transfer with one previously unmentioned and never again to be
    mentioned Alice P. Coooky, and was in the midst of trying to decide
    whether he wanted to save up and buy the olympic sized pool, or
    whether the standard backyard size would do.  Just as August, as
    he had decided to call himself, since he was no longer a herself
    and in fact more, in the human sense, an itself, was about to withdraw
    a rather sizable sum of money from the First National Bank and
    Aquarium, a woman suddenly leaped out from behind the fake trees
    and yelled...

    TIIIINEEEEE BUBBLES.....
    
    "What the..." Thought Alice, who was no longer a woman or a man or even
    alive or...oh forget it.
    
    "That song...hmmm that song reminds me of something, I just cant
    pinpoint where I have heard it before."
    
    Meanwhile back at the cave, ranch, building, chicken coop, wherever
    the heck we are....
    
    James again looked at the door to his left, contemplating entry.
    He knew that if he entered he would end up in some hidious place
    that only the writers of the...er so called story could create.
    "What the hell." thought James, "What have I got to loose."  "I
    have been in every concievable little nook of the globe and beyond,
    died, turned into a female, and killed at least a dozen times, what
    the hell else could be any different."
    
    With that, James entered the door, only to find........
    

    on the dining room table, square in the center on a little doilly,
    the hit of acid he vaguely remembered taking back on that darkish
    night so long ago.
    
    "Ahh", he thought, or seemed to think,"that could explain everything,
    if I could only concentrate enough ... "
    
    The ringing in his head materialized in the corner in the form of
    a phone.  He picked up the receiver...control Z
    

    "User entered control-z to abort command" flashed across the
    mirror above the table.  The walls twirled wildly and vanished. He
    found himself hanging from a glowing white dot.  More dots hung
    above him and below them.  He could just make out the shape of a
    gigantic glowing left angle bracket, and beyond it more dots, like
    stars.
    
    He twisted and clambered on top of the dot.  It was almost
    large enough to sit on comfortably.  He clung to it, praying
    the power would stay on, and peered at the other dots.  Gradually
    they took shape:
    
    Notes> 

    He peered the other direction.  Below him, a bar of highlighted
    text gleamed eerily, like a pool of brimstone.
    
    This was worse than the EBCDIC.  He was trapped inside the
    VT220.    

    	'What to do, what to do,' James mused, as he tried to make out
    the words below him.  Just as he was about to try and move over
    a bit to get a better view, however, a command appeared at the top
    of the screen:
    
    	Notes> 532.last
    
    	After recovering his balance after almost being knocked loose
    by the carriage return, James scooted over a bit and read the words
    on the screen:
    
    	"'What to do, what to do,' James mused..."
    
    	Realising that he was in imminent danger of recursing recursively,
    James jumped to what appeared to be a path of dots near the top
    of the screen and ran off the side where he ran into...

    A BUG!
    Not your ordinary bug mind you....It was a NOTES BUG!
    Following the bug was this glowing thing....James couldn't quite
    make it out but he knew that it was following the bug.  
    
    As the bug followed by the tron came closer, James realized that
    he was in the dirrect path of these two beings.....
    
    "All right you guys", said James.  "This has gone FAR enough!"
    
    Take me back to the ocean or the cave or someplace other than here.."
    
    Just then a loud voice blasted throughout the "room".....
    
    James?  the voice said.... "If you want to go to another place,
    all you have todo is say is the magic words and it shall be done!"
                        
    "But I know not the magic words!" James replied......
    
    "Look around you my son, look around you......
    
    Suddenly james noticed.......
    

    . . . a small table with a large red vase on top.  He muttered under
    his breath, "Holy moly, what an ugly flowerpot."
    
    When he came to, James found himself in a spaceship somewhere near
    the galactic core firing an anti-neutrino photon cannon at beings
    with pointy ears in other spaceships who were firing their
    anti-neutrino photon cannons at him.  James spoke into the microphone
    on his helmet headset, "Why are we shooting at those other ships?!?"
    
    A rather gruff voice came back over the headset speakers, "Turret
    number four must have been hit.  Gunners mate Smith appears to have
    lost his senses.  Someone check him out."
    
    A few seconds later James looked up. Approaching him was . . . 

    ...none other than Professor Sherman Potter, an android who had
    been built using the most recent technological advances which allowed
    not only for the duplication of physical features, but also the
    duplication of personality, given only a minimum of one hour of
    film.  The film for Sherman had been found lying around the remains
    of one of the last movie studios left with anything intact after
    The War To End All Wars, Version 4.5.  This android had become so
    popular, with his all around good humor and good sense, that he
    was in very high demand among all the spaceship of the fleet, and
    as result was given the honorary title 'Professor', though no one
    really knew what it meant or why it was honorary.
    
    	The War To End All Wars, Version 4.5, was not, of course, an
    actual war, but simply a somewhat misguided computer program.  As
    a matter of fact, it was the only successful program ever written
    by one Norman Quark.  He only was able to sell one copy of it, though,
    and died soon thereafter, so he never really had a chance to profit
    from it.  Too bad.
    
    	James was rather shocked to see Sherman Potter walking towards
    him, especially since he was sitting in front of an anti-neutrino
    photon cannons, and he would have said something to that effect,
    if not for the fact the his brain was in the process of overloading
    and thus drawing all the power he had available.  His brain, however,
    was not suprised when seconds later he fainted.
    
    	James awoke some highly indeterminite time later to find himself
    staring into the eyes of...

Hanne Adfield.  She had found him unconscious and was applying a cold 
compress to his brow.

Hanne was the sort of woman that any man would want by his bed if he 
was ill and in it if he wasn't.  James was trying to determine just 
what he was and where she should be, when she arose and began walking 
away.

He couldn't let her get away, not again.  Mustering his last bit of 
strength, he got to his feet and went after her.  As he drew closer
she could hear his pants (he was wearing corduroy).  Hanne turned,
her eyes were full of desire and her .........

    face had become somewhat distorted.  As James looked with awe at
    the face of Hanne (who the hell is this person anyhow)he noticed
    out of the corner of his eye that her hand had a familiar gleem
    to it.  It reminded him of one of those stupid horror movies back
    in the eighties.....um....what were they called?....oh yea, Nightmare
    on Elm Street, that was the name.  At last count, James remembered,
    they had finally killed Freddie in Nightmare On Elm Stree part MCXXIII
    "The Dark and stormy night."
    
    James, too preoccupied with his thoughts of gore, didn't notice
    that Hanne had taken the form of nonother that Freddie himself!
    Frightened by this james started chanting the ever popular chant
    that he had heard so many times.  
    
    "One, two, freddie's coming for you....."
    "Three four, better lock the door....."
    
    James could not understand why he was doing this, it just felt like
    the thing to do....      suddenly..........

    The ground started to shake.  More like a vibration than an earthquake,
    it increased in intensity, until the ground itself seemed to want to
    split open! 
    
    S-word, a *huge* sandworm rose out of the ground, and with a
    ear-splitting moan, swallowed Freddie (too bad it couldn't swallow the
    movies).  Having lept to one side in the nick of time, James heard a
    the bass sounds of a thumper in the distance.  Lying as still as he
    could (no mean feat with a 400 meter sandworm within jumping distance),
    he watched as the sandworm went towards the hypnotic "lub-lub-lub" of
    the thumper. 
    
    
    "Muad'dib!" exclaimed James, as he lifted himself up, shook off the
    dirt, and looked around.  Just as he was getting straightened out, he
    heard... 

    "It's the wrong way to meet a sandworm,
      It's the wrong way, I know ... " to the tune of some ancient Irish
    lilt.
    
    The tune struck a chord in James mind ...

    The tune struck a chord in James' mind...
    
    	not to mention a song in his heart.  But suddenly, a loud
    thunderous voice came booming through the thunder.  "Watch out for
    copyright infringement on the SANDWORM saga, the writers of DUNE"
    might not appreciate the ad-libbing on the original story."  Hearing
    this and realizing that he still wasn't comprehending anything that
    was happening, James fell down unconscious.  When through the sandstorm
    and the bellowing winds came...

    the refrain of yet another old tune ...
    
    "in that windy old weather, stormy old weather, when the wind blows,
      just pull on the teather"

    James puzzled over this refrain ... This was an old sea shanty but
    that last phrase didn't sound right.  As consciousness came to James,
    he looked about, and revealed by the blown sand beside him was just
    that ... a leather teather disppearing into the sand.  As the winds
    howled, with the words of the sea shanty still in his head, James
    grabbed the teather and pulled .....

    James slowly regained his senses and consciousness.  What exactly
    had happened to him after pulling the teather?, he wondered.  With
    great effort, he pulled himself to his feet.  Somewhere in the back
    of his mind was the thought of some old sea shanty.  Not knowing
    why this was in his mind, he discarded it immediately.  He began
    walking across the desert.  How long have I been out?, he thought
    to himself.  After a few minutes of walking he saw something partially
    hidden in the sand.  He picked it up and found that it was a calendar.
    Could this be right?  According to the dates, he had been lying
    there in the desert for exactly 11 months.  Curiosity over powered
    terror.  What could possibly kept him alive for that long?  Why
    wasn't he dead?  So intent on his thoughts and confusion, James
    failed to notice the large shadow coming up behind him.  He turned
    quickly about and he couldn't believe his eyes.  Standing before
    him was....
    
    
    >> David <<
    (Having just found this notes file yesterday, I thought I'd see
    if we could get this going once again)

... the Grinch.  

    The Grinch ...


Dave C.

         The moonlight beat gently against the windowpane, losing most
    of its strength filtering through the accumulated dust and grime.
    What of it struggled through cut through the stygian blackness of
    the deserted cellar, leaving just a hint on the presence of cobwebs,
    dust, and bulked stuff.

        
    
       And if you held your breath, you could only just hear the scurrying
    of filthy, disgusting rats behind the barrels stacked in the corner.
    The aroma of decay, cloying, and putrid was almost overpowering.
    He held his Chinoise silk handkerchief, recently purchased at Harrods,
    against his face.  He stumbled forward, dust and cobwebs cleaving
    to his fevered brow when.......

"Serena!"

She stood there in the moonlight [oh, did we say there was moonlight?],
her hair shining like silver, her milky skin glistening, her nightgown
fluttering gently in the breeze [window open somewhere?].

"You seem surprised to see me, John."

"I am", he said, "I thought you were ... "

"Not any more!" she spit out.  "I don't care if I ever see them again!
I hope they ..."

Her words were suddenly cut off as a sickening thud echoed dully in the gloom.
She stumbled forward, clutching, falling.  ...

    James, who realized that he was being called John only moments ago,
    lunged forward to catch Serena.  As he did this, he snapped himself
    out of hallucinogenic daze and found himself back to where he was
    before it all began.  He shielded his eyes form the glaring afternoon
    desert sun and looked into the eyes of the giant Grinch standing
    before him.  He dropped the calendar that he had been holding in
    his hand, turned around and began to run from the Grinch.  He realized
    the futilety of his action when the Grinch reached down, picked
    him up and.....
    
    
    
    >> David <<

   ... said "Jane, Jane, where have you been these last eleven months?"

Then James remembered.  Indeed he *was* Jane.   He checked.  Yup, she
was Jane.  

The strain was too much for her.   She fainted.


      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *




Dave C.

    
    
    After a while, Janet came to. She could see a row of stars 


      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *

    
    "with only one *, I'll take a deep breath and look about me"
    she muttered....
    
    
    To her right was......

    An old victorian farm house, set back from the road and surrounded
    in a frame of trees.  
    
    In the gloom of the gathering evening dusk, by starlight, Jane could
    see eerie shadows playing to and fro.  She approched slowly, all
    the time wondering....
    
    

    ..at least, she thought she wondered. In fact, she wandered. Janet had
    never been too hot at spelling. Since that fateful day when she
    misspelt 'hat' as 'cat' and ended up sticking cat-pins in darling sweet
    tabathakins, she had feared a similarly catastrophic stroke of
    dyslexia. 
    
    This was to be the day on which the gods of the alphabet struck a
    second terrilbe lbow.
    
     

Then she sat a spell.  And spelled John as he spelled c-a-t.  Then she
wandered as she wondered, and, to be safe, wondered as she wandered.

When she came, too, around the east side of the house, climbed in through
the window, and saw the one wall's space was intentionally left blank.
Moving the rug, she opened a trap-door, descended into a lantern-lit cellar ...

...or, was it really a lantern-lit cellar? She decided to go and check. So she
went up the stairs again, took the Websters, searched under the "t" until she
realized "cellar" started with a "c", and then quickly found "cellar". And it
had a separate entry for "lantern-lit cellar"! She compared the description with
what she had just seen, and indeed it was identical. Now that she realized the
cellar was known (why else would it have a separate entry in Websters?), her
cusiosity was stilled. She left the house, took the broom standing next to the
door, and....

    drove off in it. The Brougham, that is. 
    
    Bang!

   "Oh no" cried Jane. "Not this!!" "Not a flat tire, here in the middle
    of nowhere, and in the middle of the night."  
    
    Muttering to herself about just having her nails done, Jane climbed
    out in search of the spare tire.  
    
    As she was about to grab the jack stand and tire iron she felt another
    presence.  Looking up, with horror filled eyes, she saw it was....
    

    her mother, who was a compulsive protector, and mistrusted Jane
    severely.
    Mother gazed upon the dazed jane and observed,"...

    Agent Dooright, special investigator for the I.R.S..  "So I've finally
    caught up with you," he said to her.  "I'll admit that it hasn't
    been easy, what with your various name and sex changes, but I always
    get my man, or woman, when an audit is being done."  
    
    Jane was horrified.  She wasn't even aware that she was being followed.
    She didn't know what to do.  She looked to the side and saw a red
    button marked "PUSH IN THE EVENT THAT AN I.R.S. AGENT HAS FINALLY
    CAUGHT UP TO YOU".  "What an odd button", she thought to herself.
    Knowing no other way out of this extremely unusual situation, she
    decided to take the chance.  She quickly reached out and pressed
    the mysterious button.
    
    A intensely bright light filled the area.  Jane screamed, more from
    shock than fear or pain.  Agent Dooright screamed also.  When the
    light left, Jane noticed that her unexpected follower was gone.
    She would have been relieved if it weren't for the fact that in
    his place, standing before her big as life, was....
    

       <<< Note 532.176 by CSG001::MILLER "Vox clamantis in deserto." >>>

    her mother, who was a compulsive protector, and mistrusted Jane
    severely.
    Mother gazed upon the dazed jane and observed,"...

    
    "...oh, rhododendrons and dodecahedrons!"  
    
    "Mother, truly, there is no call for such language.  As you can
    see I am perfectly fine, and the IRS agent has disappeared into
    that ubiquitous space known as `elsewhere'.  *Do* go away now, there's
    a good mum."
    
    "Go away when your gender is in constant threat, your very identity
    challenged?  You must be mad.  Come along, Daddy is waiting for
    his tea."
    
    Jane's mother grasped her daughter by the arm and attempted to turn
    her around.  As they both turned, each let out an unintentional
    shriek, for there, plain as could be, was...

    ...a giant beetle wearing bi-focals and smoking what appeared to
    be a Malboro menthol cigarette.  He flashed them a sly and curious
    grin, cleared his throat and began to speak.  "In a world filled
    with questions that remained unanswered, such as why do we park
    in driveways and drive on parkways?, one must wonder (not wander)
    why you keep going where you don't want to be going".
    
    "What do you mean?", asked Jane.
    
    "Another question still", replied the beetle.
    
    "We don't even know where it is we're going or how we keep getting
    there to begin with", Jane responded.  "So many bizarre events occur
    and I couldn't even begin to tell you why or how".
    
    "Well", said the beetle, "I will gladly send you on your way to
    where you want to be, whether you realize that you want to be there
    or not.  Simply walk through that doorway to your right".
    
    Jane, and her mother, looked to where the beetle was pointing. 
    They looked at each other, nodded, and walked into the doorway.
    As they disappeared from sight, the beetle laughed an evil laugh.
    "The fools", he thought to himself, "so trusting, so stupid.  How
    could they trust someone that they don't even know? (Ah, yet another
    question)".  
    
    He laughed the more he thought about it.  Little did the unsuspecting
    Jane and her mother realize that the would soon step out into the
    dimension of the....
    
    
    >> David <<

    The Land of Oz....
    
    (Dorthy's, not the other)
    
    Okay.  Pick it up guys.
    
    

    "Hell's teeth!" said Jane, in an uncharacteristically abrupt tone, and
    immediately grabbed her mother and jumped back through the door.
    "Phew! That was close."
    "Let's try the door on the left, instead. That should be a step
    in the right direction."
    "Just a minute -- you're not my mother! Why - you're -- you're.."
    
    Ir appeared that in her haste to leave Oz, Jane had left her mother
    behind, and grabbed a passing

wicked witch.

"Oh, you again, Dorothy?"
"Jane."
"Huh?"
"Never mind.  How do I get outa here?  Where am I to go?  What am I to do?"
"What's going on here?  Do I have the right script?  I guess I'm supposed to
say, 'Frankly, uhhh, Jane, I don't give a ..."
"I wanna go home!"
"Why, you've had the power all along, Jane.  (This is better, although someone
else should have said that ... what was her name?)"
"Don't get sarcastic with me, Margaret.  I don't have a bucket of water, but
I can spit!"
"A nice girl like you!?  Go on!"
Not one to pass up a dare, Jane expectorated.
"Oh, no, not again!"

The witch, however, instead of melting and steaming away, changed into

    a Morton Downey Jr. lookalike.  "Oh no", said Jane in a tone of
    total disgust.  "And I thought that things couldn't possibly get
    any worse".
    
    "Just goes to show what you know", said the doppleganger.
    
    "Why don't you just shut up and tell me how to get out of this place
    and find my mother?"
    
    "Well I don't know what to tell you", he responded, "I just got
    here myself".
    
    They looked around.  Jane noticed what appeared to be an elevator
    partially hidden behind a group of trees.  She snuck away from the
    man beside her, so that she wouldn't have him following her, and
    headed for the elevator.  She reached her destination and stepped
    inside.  She looked at the panel of buttons on the wall.  After
    scanning them all, she smiled.  "Well this ought to get me where
    I want to go", thought Jane to herself.  With the smile still on
    her face, she reached out and pressed a button marked...

    "Mother and Child".
    
    The elevator shuddered, whined, and lurched upwards. After what Jane
    thought was an unreasonably short time, it stopped. 
    Jane got out.
    "Now to find Mother", she said.
    
    Mother was nowhere to be seen.
    
    Jane felt strange.
    
    "Gosh!" she said.
    
    She was pregnant. There was only one thing for it. Back into
    the lift, and

    ....push the button marked "Over the Rainbow".  The elevator began
    elevating rapidly.  "Up, up and away" thought Jane.  
    
    The elevator shrieked to a halt.  "Fine way to treat someone in
    my condition" complained Jane.  The elevator declined to comment.
    
    The door swooshed open to reveal an old and faded patch of yellow
    brick.  Rubbing her enlarged abdomen, Jane stepped gingerly out
    the door. 
    
    Off to the left was a very large chestnut tree.  Sitting there in
    the shade was none other than....
    
    
    

an obstetrician.

<Time passes>

"That's not my baby!  It's ..."

    "..that lift again. I never touched you" said the obstetrician.
    "Never mind that," said Jane, "I was looking for my mother. What
    happened to her?"
    
    "Oh. Well, you see, you in fact -- um -- _are_ your mother"
    
    "WHAT?"
    
    "That lift. I've come across it before in my obstetrical practices. You
    get in the lift a normal, healthy woman and the lift turns you into
    your own mother."
    
    "So where's Jane?" said Jane's mother.
    
    "Mother!" said Jane.
    
    "Ha ha!" said the obstetrician. "I was only joking -- a little
    obstetrical joke, that."
    
    "What the hell are you doing pregnant again, at your age?" said Jane's
    mother.
    
    "Thank God I'm not you, you old bat" said Jane.
    "Woops -- here come the contractions..."
    

"Whaddya mean, 'Here they come'?  This stories REPLETE with contradictions!
You're me.  I'm you.  The doc is laughing.  Jim or John or somebody is lost,
the witch is dead (ding dong) ...

"No, you fool!  ConTRActions!  ConTRActions!  AAUAUAAAUGHHHH!"

The doctor presided at the birth of the baby and the death of the mother(s) in
childbirth.  This left only one person in the lift (the doctor going the way of
every other character in this spiel).

This leaves the narration at the hand of the child (whose gender won't be
determined until the next chapter) and the future development of said child
at the hands of the next Noter, who continues with ...


                                  Chapter II

                               The Child Awakes


One day, after the child had awakened and contemplated the opalescent,
omnipresent and quiescent ascent of the sun against the steel blue sky ...

    "...oh, no, something's really WRONG here...ouch..."
    
    Jane began puffing as she had seen all those women on television
    do when they were having babies.  
    
    "(puff) I seem to be shrinking.  I need to (puff) get control of
    this situation.  Mother, (puff), what should I be doing differently?
    I feel rather (puff) peculiar."
    
    All at once several things happened.  First, Jane's mother vanished
    into thick air (smog, you know).  Then, Jane gave a final (puff).
    Her whole body was sucked inside out into a vacuum, leaving two
    small babies.
    
    The obstetrician picked up the infants, gently patting them to start
    their lungs operating.  One at a time they began..."waah! waah!
    waah! waah!"
    
    The noise triggered a big bang.  There on the horizon was James,
    holding a baby bottle and two booties.  Next to him was Jane, holding
    her head.  Next to Jane was...

    it became apparant that D. Herbert Lawrence had come to life.
    And what a life it was. The dark power of his erstwhile mother's
    life force surged through his thighs, bringing him into touch with the
    animal onenes of his loin-spirit. With each breath he took, the bodily
    earthiness og his inner man-creature gained mysterious power.
    
    He broke wind noisily.
    
    "Beg pardon," he asked of a fat passer-by.
    
    "Thassalright" said tweedledee (for it was he)..
    

    Next to Jane was...
    
    a large, overstuffed Panda Bear with a huge red bow tied around
    it's neck.  Attached to the bow hung a large card.
    
    The card said "Happy Birthday To You.  Happy Birthday To You.  Happy
    Birthday Dear John and Jane, Happy Birthday To You.
    
                                             Love Ya,
    
    and it was signed........................
    
    	

... Albert.


    Albert ...



Dave C.

    ...(Einstein, of course) simply wished to wish James and Jane a
    wonderful birthday.  It fazed him not at all that he (Einstein)
    had, um, passed over to that big lab in the sky some several years
    previous.  He was determined to make their birthday a success.
    
    As James and Jane had surmised, the greeting on the birthday card
    was in actuality a complex mathematical calculation.  Unfortunately,
    they had absolutely NO idea how to interpret the information.
    Therefore, they decided to go find someone who would be capable
    of making sense of the hastily jotted notes.
    
    "Happy Birthday", murmured James.  "That obviously ties into the
    relative certainty of twins being born at the same time, to the
    same set of parental units.  And that `best wishes' portion must
    be the formula necessary to break the code, don't you think, Jane?"
    
    Alas, there was no reply.  James turned slowly (so as to not disturb
    the frolicking molecules) and, in the distance, was barely able
    to discern...

    the faint melody of...

    The theme song from "Gilligan's Island"  
    
    "I can't stand that song" said James.  "It drives me insane!!!!"
    
    With that, he started glancing around with glazed, blood-shot eyes.
    Upon the wall he spied just what he'd need all along to get this
    ancient theme song quiet at last.  When he was finished, it would
    never be heard again!!!!!
    
    Realizing that he had to act quickly, James.........
    

    ....Pulled the old shot gun off the wall, pointed it just below his
    chin (facing upward), pulled back the hammer, tightened his finger
    on the trigger and ended all his worries along with the theme song
    echoing in his mind.  James was not too bright, but even that doesn't
    matter anymore.  James is dead.  Deceased.  No longer alive.  He's
    finished.  Rest in peace.  Kaput.  Goodnight.  Goodbye.  So long.
    
    
    THE END!!!!!!!!!!!

        Suddenly, the sun went supernova!  Not only James, but
        the entire planet was vaporized.
        
        The End.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, an eccentric scientist had just
invented a space/time warp machine, and was testing it moments before the sun
blew up.  As he reappeared 300 billion light years from where he started, he
looked up and saw (well, nothing much, because the light from the explosion
hadn't gotten there yet).  While wondering what had gone wrong (little did he
know!) with his experiment, he opened the door to the back room of his little
ship, and to his surprise found...

    ...James's lookalike from a paralell universe who was also known,
    funnily enough, as James (the paralell universe used ISO Latin 1,
    which just goes to show the importance of international standards
    for the modern time traveller).
    
    This James tipped his hat, winked at the audience (who knew he wasn't
    really going to die anyway), and...

>================================================================================
>Note 532.201            It was a dark and stormy night II             201 of 201
>MARVIN::KNOWLES "Running old protocol"                7 lines  13-NOV-1989 15:16
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                          -< Restored to life, pt II >-
>
>    ...James's lookalike from a paralell universe who was also known,
>    funnily enough, as James (the paralell universe used ISO Latin 1,
>    which just goes to show the importance of international standards
>    for the modern time traveller).
>    
>    This James tipped his hat, winked at the audience (who knew he wasn't
>    really going to die anyway), and...
>

>>                 <<< VISA::USER:[NOTES$LIBRARY]JOYOFLEX.NOTE;1 >>>
>>                               -< The Joy of Lex >-
>> ================================================================================
>> Note 532.202            It was a dark and stormy night II             202 of 202
>> KAOFS::S_BROOK "Here today and here again tomorrow"  14 lines  13-NOV-1989 19:46
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >================================================================================
>> >Note 532.201            It was a dark and stormy night II             201 of 201
>> >MARVIN::KNOWLES "Running old protocol"                7 lines  13-NOV-1989 15:16
>> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >                          -< Restored to life, pt II >-
>> >
>> >    ...James's lookalike from a paralell universe who was also known,
>> >    funnily enough, as James (the paralell universe used ISO Latin 1,
>> >    which just goes to show the importance of international standards
>> >    for the modern time traveller).
>> >    
>> >    This James tipped his hat, winked at the audience (who knew he wasn't
>> >    really going to die anyway), and...

    
    "I've been standing out here for some 15 months now", James said with
    an air of resignation tinged with regret, a degree of angst and a
    pregnant pause.
    "..and nothing's happened."
    Little did he know that..

    ...with a tremendous crash of dirt and a flash of light that hurt
    James' dried-out eyes, a JOYOFLEXer thrust his hand through the
    lid of James' pleasant quiet coffin and dragged him out into a
    snow-covered field dotted with strange four-legged creatures.
    
    The creatures had tails and horns.  They breathed smoke, and their
    cloven hooves cut through the mud.
    
    James thought he had once known what these creatures were, but his
    brain seemed to have decayed along with the rest of him and he
    couldn't put a name to them.
    
    "Excuse me, sir," he asked the nearest creature.  "Might I
    inquire--"
    
    "You may not," cried the creature, lifting his tail and pawing the
    ground.  "Accostable!  How dast you!" 
    
    And he charged, ready to drive James back into the dirt from
    whence he had only just arisen.

    "It won't work," said James, "because dead men don't have credit
    cards.  You must be charging on someone else's account."
    
    The creature knotted up its brow.  "How do you expect me to
    understand that?  Don't you know there's Nobel prize in economics?"
    
    "Detestable," said James.  "But your line of reasoning is creditable."
    
    This line apologizes for being referable, and the subject that it
    speaks of is chargeable.

    "You speak," said the creature, "as a being of great knowledge and
    understanding.  You are utterly incomprehensible.  You should be
    among the leaders of our country.  Follow me."
    
    The creature stomped away. 
    
    James tried to walk, but found his bony feet somewhat
    incapacitated by the lack of flesh.  He stumbled and fell to what
    remained of his knees.
    
    "Incredible!" shouted the creature.  "You have trouble even
    walking.  You must be a very great thinker indeed.  Climb aboard
    my back, honored sir."
    
    James' suit helped hold together the bones of his upper body, so
    he was able to clamber onto the creature's back.  He clung tightly
    to the charging animal's hairy neck as the ground fell away
    beneath them.

    "Bumpy but ridable, but please be careful," said James.
    "I'm not like you, indestructible.  Only my clothes are
    holding me together."
    
    "And now I am carrying them," said the creature, "the
    first to suitable."
    
    "Where are we going, anyway?" asked James.
    
    "To a concert," replied the creature.  "All the great
    mathematicians are playing with functions decomposible."

    "What kind of concert was that?" asked James.  "I mean, I
    could appreciate 'The Sounds of Silence," even though I'm
    a classic lover myself.  But 18 minutes of Watergate tapes?
    And a narration of the domestic timetable of Cathay Pacific
    Airlines?  I thought I was dead again."
    
    "With any luck, you will be," the creature predicted ebulliently.