

What it Tastes Like to Be Sane

By

Sean Ahern
Copyright 2011 © by Sean M. Ahern

All rights reserved

Published online by the author at Lulu.com

ISBN: 978-1-257-83094-7
Chapter I

...and the clown disappeared in a cloud of lettuce. Epispastic was the word of the day. Baritone Juicebox, who had so recently been full to the brim with quixotic ideals, now desired so badly naught but the construction of an oceanic sarcophagus, of which he would become a permanent resident. Why he got to this point and what occurred afterwards is encompassed by a gallimaufry of tales of joy and despair, of elation and woe, of euphoria and not having access to tacos at the moment you most desire them, and other contrasting adjectives, the first of which is a positive and the second of which is a negative.

See, at this point, for our dear Baritone, the Earth's oceans were bereft of their usual vastness. Where one could normally, on a good day, see a double, maybe triple digit quantity of miles or kilometers to the horizon, Baritone (or Bari, as will often be referred to hereafter) could see every ocean, sea, and body of water on the side of Earth that was facing him that was large enough to be seen from the moon. The Earth, as a whole, seemed extremely pastoral from this viewpoint, for everything was quiet. Naught could be seen stirring from here, though the contrary was actually true, as all the usual stirrings were occurring on his home planet. Still, from his perspective, he could easily ignore the conflicts and the multitude of strife, and the mundane regards of all the lives and deaths going on below him. Indeed, what he saw was a postcard image, one that he would be proud to send to his dearest relation or to his closest friend in order to incite jealousy of him and the wondrous places he had visited. Bari, however, had only purchased one t-shirt to prove he had been to the moon, and he wouldn't be mailing it to anybody. He wanted to wear it to his grave, in order to provide proof of his lunar escapades to whoever found his body, should it be found before his new oceanic companions devoured him, if ever. Otherwise he would content himself with floating about, unconscious of what was happening around him, or perhaps becoming useful by becoming food for one of the throng which would cohabitate the ocean with him.

Oftentimes though, it is at the last and most crucial moment when we remember what we have forgotten, after contemplating for hours or sometimes days. In Bari's case it was that he had never learned to swim. This of course seemed to be much more of a major issue than one realizing as they leave their house for vacation that they had forgotten toothpaste, as toothpaste could be easily acquired en route to the location of the aforementioned vacation. This was a very important detail. Now, you might that think that since his aim was to drown himself, whether or not he could swim didn't actually matter. In fact, it almost might seem to be a better alternative, but he wanted to die in the ocean of his home planet. To drown on the way, while he was still in space, just wouldn't do. No, he needed to die as a meteor would if it were alive in the first place: perhaps breaking up in the atmosphere, but eventually reaching the surface if it was big enough in the first place, which he hoped he was, and having the impact kill him. Mostly he just wanted to make his abode with the sharks and the whales and the rays and the sea cucumbers and the angler fish and the shrimp and the tuna and the rest of that list which could go on for much longer than the average attention span. He didn't even desire the memory of himself that would be left were he to leave a crater, but just to plunge into the anonymity of the water, which would go on about its business, without him leaving a mark upon it. This determination, of course, must count for a good amount of points, or so he thought, but it still bothered him that he had never learned such a basic skill before he died. He had tried it once, but that attempt didn't work out so well.

Baritone Juicebox, once upon a time, had three faces, which he would show to the world in rotation according to his current state of mind. It was an interesting ability, but one that most people have and do not realize they possess. One day, he had taken a ferry down to visit a friend of his that had taken up residence in an undersea volcano. It turned out that due to the United States Postal Sandwich's delay in sending mail, he had not received the notification that his friend had moved until he arrived at the volcano and met its new inhabitant, a hermit crab with a most unpleasant temperament. By the time this had occurred, Bari, who had intended on staying the night, had missed the last ferry back home, and couldn't bear the thought of taking up residence, however ephemeral, with the aforementioned crab. He acted accordingly, and shot himself out of the volcano, which conveniently happened to be erupting within ten minutes of his decision that he would not share quarters for the evening with this particular crab. Before he reached the surface, he began to lose momentum, first slowly and then much more rapidly as he grew increasingly weary, and it was at this point that he realized that he had never learned to swim. Though maybe not gifted in the swimming abilities department, our beloved protagonist was certainly no dullard, and thinking as quickly as the electrical connections in his brain would allow, decided to try, with most valiant effort, to imitate the sharks he had seen so much from watching Shark Week annually. He was, however, lacking certain components which would have allowed him to do so in a complete and accurate fashion, and it was, in the end, only by the grace of a passing armada of giant squid that he eventually reached the surface. As you certainly recall, Bari had at this point three faces in his possession, and due to the trauma of the experience, one face instantly defected and joined the first passer-by it saw when it returned to land. The other one that Bari would eventually lose was so disheartened that it was stuck, alone, with the face that it least liked (on the basis that it found the other face too ugly, not knowing that they were identical except for a minute discrepancy in nostril size.) that it, despite a complete lack of education on the subject, gave itself surgery to sever itself and hoped that, through the process of autotomy, and not autonomy, as this typing program suggests, it would regenerate a new body. Seventeen days later that new body was fully grown and well on its way to starting a successful ensaladaball league for underprivileged children in New Cow City. Bari, however, was down two faces and so traumatized that he could not bear either the thought of losing that third face or once more attempting an attempt at swimming education.

Now, being seemingly stranded on the moon, and with the desire to reach his new Benthic home growing ever more powerful, Bari began to regret the lack of swimming education in his life. For better or for worse, Bari also didn't know how to quit. He was confident, though. He sincerely believed that, despite a complete lack of training, that if he strove, through an effort of will, he would reach the desired destination. Not a stop sign stood in his way to tell him to stop. He was confident that nothing could make him do so. He was set. He would only need to hold his breath for long enough for Earth's gravitational pull to kick in and bring him to the sweet release of death in the desired location. He bent down, exhaled, inhaled and held that breath in, and with a mighty push jumped, defying gravity by simply telling it that it was wrong.

Some people would say that to strap oneself to a rocket and launch it into space is pure lunacy, and perhaps idiocy. It might in fact be stupidity, or other synonyms for that word, combined with others of the aforementioned. Some might claim it to be simply a ludicrous idea, one that could never work.

In the same timespan that it would take, on average, for a person to dodge a falling bucket of water after a gardyloo has been issued by the person dropping said bucket, Bari was out of the realm of the moon's new wheat/sulfur atmosphere sandwich which had recently been acquired from a nearby moon that no longer wanted an atmosphere and in the vastness which constitutes space. He now had four years more experience watching Shark Week and that paid off tremendously in this case which we are now discussing. Space wasn't as exciting as he had thought. As a child he imagined himself an astronaut, and fancied that one day he might become a famous explorer in this extraterrestrial frontier. Now he was there, and maybe it was because he was so focused on propelling himself back to earth, but he thought that it was a pretty bland place. Of course, it was because he was so focused on his goal that he missed out on all the exciting parts of space, such as the mathematical equations which randomly floated about and the various debris which had come into his region from all the infinite corners of the universe.

When Bari first arrived on the moon, he was treated kindly, but with a certain natural curiosity by most of its inhabitants. He did, after all, arrive strapped to a rocket. Most moon dwellers at least had the common sense to strap a rocket to them, as opposed to strapping themselves to rockets. Stranger things have happened everywhere though, especially on the moon, as best exemplified by their traditional Thursday night...

Doubt is often a very powerful and divisive force. And thus, when once again it was only by the grace of a passing armada of giant squid that Bari was going to be able to reach his goal, and the shadow of doubt began to creep up on Bari, followed by the body which created that shadow, reality, or the reality which applies specifically to Baritone Juicebox, split into three parts. The following scenarios will be discussed at varying lengths.

One: Bari survived. However, as extreme situations often cause a gallimaufry of extreme changes, Bari became a basketball and fell to Earth, scoring the winning point for the home team that day. This is Darwinism at its best. Not everyone is so lucky. Many times Charles Darwin, being the prankster he is, causes things to evolve in silly, often useless ways. In this case, Baritone Juicebox must consider himself to be the luckiest person to be graced by the concept of evolution, and this is not something to be taken lightly, for we must treat the gift of evolution with caution, so that it is not one day revoked because of our abuse.

Two: Bari died. What happened is this: With the aid of some passing giant squid, he made it into orbit. Being that he wasn't flammable, he didn't burn in the atmosphere, and thusly he achieved his original goal of plunging into the ocean and subsequently reaching a state of not being alive that is generally known as death.

Three: Bari survived. The Earth, sensing his indecisiveness, rejected him and bounced him back into space, towards the infamous grilled cheese nebula, which is the home of the famed four sided triangles.

...festivities.

Situated halfway between the American and Eurasian landmasses, there is a landmass, muy pequeño, where there to this day reside the last stalwarts who desperately cling to an ancient, barbaric religion that had once nearly conquered the world. It happened like this: the religion demanded of its followers that once a week they imbibe the body and the blood of their God. Now imagine yourself as this God. You've spent thousands of years exercising your wrath to instill fear in your subjects and alternately telling everyone that you loved them unconditionally to add a little bit of extra confusion, and suddenly you become relegated to a once a week snack that just happens to be worshipped as well. Add to that that you've convinced them that you were infinite, when that is most certainly not the case, and you do possess a massive, though finite amount of resources that constitute your body, and maybe they could be regenerated, but certainly not at the rate they're being consumed. Add on top of this that those people are going around killing some people so that even more people will engage in this practice, which is a pretty intimidating way to make people believe what you do. I believe that anyone in this particular predicament would be endowed with the right to feel at least a little bit irritated over time. So, this God took out an ad in the New York Times to declare himself dead (though it had been done in literature before, that was regarded by many as fiction), and it had the desired effect. Less people believed in him, and so his flesh began to regenerate faster than it was being consumed. He retired to a distant corner of the galaxy with the hopes of spending the rest of his days in the seclusion of a high class resort.

The problem of the island we were just discussing still remained. They staunchly stood by their faith, no matter how foolish, in this God, and so every weekend while lying on the beach, he would have to endure the minor inconvenience of losing a small amount of flesh and blood. This was especially irritating when he was trying to show off his magic tricks to the other inhabitants of the resort. Eventually, he grew so frustrated that at these given times he would refuse to come out of his room until they were done snacking. This eventually grew more and more frustrating, as he was stuck hiding inside, writhing in the pain of being eaten when the much more appealing games of Frisbee or surfing were going on outside. It should come as no surprise then that one day they were punished by a sequence of body parts washing up on their shore.

Baritone, as an impulse purchase, once bought a temporary trial version of immortality, though he wasn't informed as to the whereabouts on the calendar of the expiration date. He also wasn't informed as to whether any sort of extenuating circumstances existed which would lead to a termination before that unspecified date. In fact, the whole thing was really a scam, like those people in the kiosks in the middle of shopping malls that are selling the latest as seen on TV product that's bound to break in a week, but they grab the helpless people filtering by and harass them into purchasing said useless product. Only in this case he had walked into the church attempting to find some sort of spiritual guidance, and this had been the result. In these days, this was the product being peddled in such situations. In the middle ages, it had been admission into heaven, which was eventually revealed as being a scam. As such, sales dropped greatly, but those, along with other products, are still available in every church gift shop. On occasion, he pondered this purchase, and in a moment of clarity two years after the event realized that he'd been fooled into buying what everyone is given at birth, that being an indefinite amount of time to be spent alive. Only the phrase immortality seemed to cancel out the word temporary in his mind, and he conveniently ignored the oxymoronic nature of the phrase temporary immortality for a while. When he came to, he realized the comedic fallacy of the situation he had put himself in, and wished that there had been a reasonable return policy. But he was stuck with his purchase. "That's the last time I do business with them", he thought.

One morning, a severed human head, with his eyes frozen in the final terror they had beheld, which was to him no terror, but with a smile that revealed that he had thought of something extremely funny in that instant before the shark had begun to tear his body asunder washed up on shore. What a relief it had been to be eaten by a shark, that creature which he had so admired for years. Now if only that joke he had thought of could be known, for it is well known that the best jokes originate in the minds of those taking their last breaths, and much money could be made from compiling a joke book which contained these jokes. This island where he washed up was a perfect circle for most of its existence, but a while after the events in this narrative, a peninsula, fed up with its old abode, implored of its godfather, Plate Tectonics, to move it somewhere else. Naturally then, each half of the Island was a perfect semicircle. All water touching one side was heavily shark infested, while the other half was heavily Shaq(uille O'Neil) infested. It should come as no surprise then that human body parts would wash up on shore from time to time, but the truth is that on either side it was much more common for burritos to wash up.

Now, this head was soon followed by other body parts, such as arms, legs, and a torso. Lastly the viscera washed up: a plethora, a cornucopia of organs, vital and not so vital, that washed up on the beach in a random array, as if part of a package deal, an economy pack of dismembered human body parts that had been rendered useless by their separation from the body. And in the appendix, the organ whose proud function had been shattered so long ago by the process of evolution, there was frozen a vague shape. Something that had been contained within him and had been invisible throughout the course of his natural life, but had attempted to show its visage now that the appendix was available for the world to see. Something that had once meant something to him that could only be expressed in the nomenclature of shapes. It manifested itself as the symbol for pi, but who knows what that meant. It was simply there.

At some point in the future, the Earth, burned by the ever-warming scorching rays of the sun, would begin to crack. It would beseech of the sun, to no avail, to de-intensify its burning. And the sun would not listen, because it had never known anything but what it was now doing. Its nature could not be changed, even if it had been moved by the pleas of one of its dearest satellites. Because of the warming of the sun, the surface of our beloved planet would eventually dry up, crack, and shatter, and that planet would unburden itself of its own viscera. Trees, mountains, and oceans. The ground, and all the graves below that. All of these and more would begin the slow pilgrimage through space, with gravitational forces dictating the buddy system. But find a destination they never would, for nothing could replace the Earth as home for its components.

It had come to pass that the islanders possessed, at the very least, a working knowledge of the human digestive system. Perhaps due to this basic knowledge of human anatomy, the following thought process was thus logical in their minds:

  1. When we eat, we defecate

  2. We've been throwing our refuse into the shark/Shaq infested waters for a time long enough to qualify as ages

  3. Every weekend, we eat our God

  4. Thusly, going back to step one, we defecate our God

  5. Going back to step 2, we throw our God into the water

Due to all of this information, the mass opinion was that only one explanation was available for the occurrence of the parts of a body washing up on shore. The washed up remains, which, if you haven't figured out yet, belonged to our protagonist, Baritone Juicebox, were in their minds the remnants of their God that had assembled themselves in the middle of the ocean. They had avoided being eaten by the sharks and the shaqs and finally washed up on shore before they could fully assemble themselves into a body and return to the faithful followers, most likely with some form of salvation, or at the very least, veggie burgers.

The planets, stars, black holes, and antimatter, plus the respective residents of those cosmic bodies and entities, were not so naïve, foolish, or deficient in any of their intellectual faculties to the point where they could logically entertain an idea so garish to the bastions of logic, but in this place, anything was possible. The whole part of anything being possible is generally wonderful, but oftentimes, and this is such a case, that anything goes astray and becomes a doltish idea which implants itself in the minds of masses of normally sentient beings. Not a bit of all this seemed confounding to them, for they truly had the explanation to everything. What a blessed people! Oh, that such a fate could befall us all! The only event of the day that confused them also came in the form of another object washing up on shore later in the evening, and that was a piece of toast. Alas, for that no explanation was available. Oh well.

One time in Bari's youth he had become possessed by a newly discovered form of neurosis that stripped his mind of control over the great majority of actions his body would perform. In fact, the only control that was retained was the desire to eat what he wanted to, and subsequently eat that food. Thus, he found himself standing upon the venerated Milkshake Hills above the hemorrhaged waters of Lake Spatula. An alligator with silverware plunged into its scales lay, lifeless, though maybe it never lived, suspended above the ground by poles thrust through its body. If one looked past it, past the gaping jaws, past the body, and for Bari, past his past, what could be seen was a mangled cityscape. It was a cityscape he longed to experience, but only ever did so from afar. It was from this vantage point that Bari would often view the scenes of what had passed in his past within the safe confines of retrospect. From here it was safe to call to mind what ifs, what might have beens, and the opinion pieces known as what should have beens. And what a gallimaufry passed through his mind's eye each time, but it always came back to the first time he saw that alligator. Yesteryears they were at this point, though with the present as it was, they were what he desired to substitute for reality. For at one point this alligator had been located on the roof of a museum, and he had viewed it, and not because of that, but because of the current circumstance, he had been happy. Now he saw it with a sort of jaded bitterness, the sort that seems to inevitably come with age, though he would try harder than most to shake it off. To look into the gaping jaws of this mutated form of some creature of the family Crocodylidae was to behold something far different from a cityscape of this world. This was something special, though this encapsulates two things, neither of which is edible: one being the truth and the other being the future.

And while there was no specific reason the neurosis had led him to this spot, other than to enjoy the view of the water, and the alligator with the silverware in it, and the thought that the walk up to this spot would be very divertido, he appreciated the coincidence. He appreciated that some disease that temporarily took hold of his body would have a similar taste in the destinations it desired to visit as him, as he probably would have gone to this very spot of his volition in the near future anyway. In fact, he resolved then and there to make a point of going back as soon as time and resources once again allowed. It was such a kind neurosis that Bari was genuinely disappointed when it left all so suddenly. He had been hoping because of the chosen location for the walk that he would have someone finally to voice his concerns to, someone that might understand the history that this location had, though the whereabouts of the alligator were in fact ever-changing. But those who appreciated it always had a way of finding it and that was mysterious in the way that turtles always find their way back to the beach where they were born. This was important, because Bari was the sort that could attach sentimental value to anything, so long as it had the least bit merit, and had occurred in the past and had no chance of ever occurring again. But if we are to focus on the present and not on the past, at least for the present, we will find that Bari was about to say something.

"Oh well, I'm sure he'll be back."

This was, of course, a reference to the neurosis. You see, our poor protagonist, in these days, only ever found himself in the company of those creatures that saw fit to possess him, and usually did so to attain their own selfish goals. Because of this, he always looked forward to being possessed because it at least meant he would have someone to talk to, and maybe even entertain his musings. But now, the poor soul, he was left alone, and looking down from the Milkshake hills, which were named because the first settlers thought that the local cows were saying milkshake when they in fact said moo, and errantly believing, just as the settlers had their own errant beliefs, that the best current course of action would be to leap from the cliff upon which he stood into the lake. And whilst he pondered this, he began to pick at a scab that was itching, and had been so for a while. But as they say, to do that is just to reopen old wounds, and open this particular wound did. At first, the scab had been shaped like a grizzly bear, and so blood began to drop in that shape. At first it entertained him, for there was a bear shaped pool of blood on the ground beside him, and due to the quantity of chocolate milk which he had imbibed in his life, the blood looked an awful lot like that beverage. Therefore, he had a bear shaped pool of chocolate syrup lying beside him, but it eventually lost that charm and became formless. The first drops embedded themselves into the ground, with each subsequent drop being fuel for those seeds, which rapidly grew into formidably-sized carnivorous plants, and ate him.

"Poor soul", said the neurosis from afar, glad that he had diverted his possession from this creature and unto a blade of grass, and upon witnessing this, quickly diverted his attention to a passing...

Las plantas de la sangre de Bari, as they had just engaged in auto-cannibalism, now could be viewed as his authentic persona. Thus, they continuously cut themselves apart, and used themselves as a source for food for growth. Eventually they reached into the atmosphere and spread their branches across the sky so that they might obtain a better view of all that there was to see. As their flowers opened to take in the sight below them, they in turn blotted out the sun.

"How selfish", you might think.

That would seem like a reasonable thought process. He was taking all the sunlight for himself. A most self-serving form of photosynthesis, possibly the most selfish example that had yet existed. A most photosynthesis form of serving selves, I would dare say, and I dare not say much. Hark! The sun now hadn't the ability to set its rays to the surface of the Earth. What lived on Earth withered, as its food could no longer be replenished. The sun, because of all these happenings, though due in absolutely no part to its own failings, began to feel like a failure, and gave up sending out light. The entire solar system wilted. The other stars, which had tried to console the sun, used up their last bits of energy trying to dissuade it from suicide, and exhausted, died. Antimatter was all that was left alive.

"Good riddance", was the collective statement they issued when asked about that matter, and one that was easily agreed upon amongst their sorts. They were rather sick of the travails of all those silly beings, creatures, and other synonyms for living things made of matter. .

"Illogical!!" screamed one part of my brain.

"Balderdash!" was what one other part of that brain cried.

"You cannot insert such selratatious

bits of information into your writing."

All these concerns were voiced to the part of my brain that told my left hand to move the pencil across the paper. This was their verdict!

Necesitamos decir the verdad to your audience. Cosmic bodies do not naturally possess thought processes. Plants do not grow into the sky. Furthermore, the part of my brain known as conscience told me that I needed to be kinder to my characters, for all which transpires in their lives is up to me, and thus far I have been extremely cruel to them. I imagine that I have. So be it. Perhaps suffering really is a learning experience, and thus they will profit from this and become the billionaires of learning experiences. Parts of me indeed scream cruelty, for what benevolent creature would put beings whose fates are in his control into these predicaments. Well, I guess I would. But the others continued screaming.

I was overwhelmed

POINT!

I

Had no choice but

To

Heed their words, and take

Back at least what had transpired regarding the end

Of the

World and solar system and universe

And being anew, at least

Regarding those events

Because innocent bystanders could have

Been harmed by the cruelties I have inflicted

Upon my characters, and I don't want the innocent

To suffer at the hands of my

Sadistic words. Because though they might just be symbols

Upon pieces of

Paper, they

Stand for actions

Which may or may not have an impact

On the lives of those

Who inhabit this world and universe.

I apologize.
Chapter II

Ah! Kanada! To speak of this! A moose! A cow! A kow! Listen to me, and heed what words are to come, oh ye, ye who would pick the pockets of the earth and consume what ye have found and call it your own. I will begin with a container which has a volume which will contain one half gallon of liquid and which presently holds one half gallon chocolate soy milk, and as I drain it, I will spin a yarn for ye. This chapter is a timed chapter. When the milk is gone, I intend the chapter to end. Go!

It all begins with a woman stepping into her shower with the dual purpose of engaging in hygienic rituals and of delivering a message to the dolphins which reside in that vicinity. Trust me, these adventures are worth a diversion from our main character, and the twain will eventually converge, this I promise to you. This was the discourse our secondary protagonist had with the dolphins:

"Sean says hi", is what she said.

This was, in fact, the full extent of their conversation. You see, English and Echolocation are languages of rather disparate natures, and the vast majority of speakers of one do not speak the other. So, when someone says "Sean says hi" in English, it is understandable enough that one who is primarily proficient in Echolocation would interpret that as "Ocean's mine".

Imagine you are a dolphin, and you hear a human assert that the ocean is in fact theirs. Humans are always asserting such things, and it can become quite irritating, both for the humans who occupy the areas that other humans desire to conquer and rule and for the animals (such as dolphins) whose habitats most humans would love to rule. But this woman certainly meant no affront to the dolphins. See, she had uttered the line "Sean says hi", because she knew a fellow named Sean who wanted to greet the dolphins, and inquire about some information that only they knew. In short, he wanted to know about the whereabouts of Don Henley, for it was rumoured that he was to be found in the shower of this woman. And certainly if Don Henley was not present there himself, surely the dolphins, who were known to keep watch over all the Earth, would know of his present whereabouts. Let's give our newly introduced character a name now. She's a major character, and certainly deserves one. So, henceforth she shall be known has Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen. Perhaps it's a bit much, but that's her name, and we shouldn't denounce her on that basis. All we can do is attempt to learn to pronounce it, if we have the time.

Now, let's make it clear that where Don Henley is and what he's doing isn't so important, because that is his own business, but it was just out of concern that this "Sean" character wanted Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen to ask the dolphins in the shower about his whereabouts. It had been rumoured that he had been frequenting the vicinity, and this "Sean" guy cared about Don Henley. The man had been an important part of his development as a teenager. To hear that he was with dolphins was an unexpected surprise, though a good one, for I, at least, regard the company of dolphins as amongst the best company any creature on this planet could offer. In fact, in elementary school, they made us read a book about a girl who was royalty, or maybe she wasn't. But I think she was. Anyway, pirates attacked her boat or maybe a storm made it sink. I think it was pirates, but everyone died except for this young child, who ended up being raised by dolphins. Eventually she was "rescued" by humans and returned to "civilized" life and was raised to be "normal". But, the truth is she seemed happier with the dolphins. So I won't make much ado about the subject if that is where Don Henley is spending his time, it's just a sort of a shock that a major pop star would be consistently found in such company. But, Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen, so sorrowful for the grief she had caused these poor dolphins, went to the edge of the sea and became your choice of the following three cetaceans:

  1. Sperm whale (physeter macrocephalus)

  2. Long-beaked common dolphin (delphinus capensis)

  3. Dall's Porpoise (Phocoenoides Dalli)

Upon having completed the aforementioned transformation, she set out to sea to remedy the current schism she had so inadvertently created between the human race and the dolphins. After several months of campaigning and Echolocation as a second language classes, all was well, the miscommunication was corrected, and with a clean conscience, she took to the air to join her cantallifibrious cousins, the cloud porpoises.

Before we continue any further in our plot, I feel that it is essential to enlighten you as to the history and nature, the society, and the everlasting plight of the cloud porpoises, the most amiable, sentient, cetaceans to ever grace the skies of the planet Earth. In deciding how to inform as regards these creatures, I came across a conflagration in my own nature. Should I attempt to describe them myself, or sacrifice originality in order to provide you with higher quality information. For while I've always had an interest in them, I am by no means a scholar as regards the cloud porpoises. In the end I believe that when it comes to nonfiction, accuracy and detail are the most important components, and as such I will refer to a recognized expert. What follows are excerpts from Face Tennis's celebrated volume, "A Brief History of Cloud Porpoises."

"In the time before Charles Darwin invented evolution, and the Earth was still in a neonatal stage, and the seas were raging with a newborn's vivacity, there was a day where a flock of clouds descended to the surface of the ocean, curious to see up-close what exactly what it was that was making the great racket they could hear down below. The sea, conversely, was fascinated by the shapes they saw descending upon it, and with the wide-eyed wonder of the whippersnappers to whose category it belonged, rose up to meet the clouds as they descended. Swimming through the section of sea that was rising at the time was a group of porpoises, otherwise known as a pod, herd, or school. At the point in time when the water and the condensed water vapor intersected, the aforementioned porpoises found themselves stranded upon a cloud as it was rising up with its curiosity fully satisfied. This, of course, separated the porpoises from their homes, but the clouds were more than happy to give them shelter, a new home, sweater vests, and fertile cloudsoil from which a variety of delicious, edible crops could be grown. Thus was born the race of cloud porpoises."

"So it passed that evolution eventually reached the sky, and in the course of the one hundred and fifty years or so that had passed between the advent of evolution and the time in which our story takes place, the society of cloud porpoises changed in some very astounding ways. At first cloud porpoises were provided with sweater vests by the clouds. This became such a staple of their form of garments that newborns, they found, were often born with them already on. Over time, this became more and more common, and in fact, eventually it was the standard. Of course, nothing in life is static, and as time wore on, those sweater vests developed into full-blown sweaters. Only a few were born on average per year with underdeveloped sweater vests, though there were more in some years and in the fortunate ones, there were none, but the standard fare in the clouds was that in most cases the sweater vests would grow into sweaters by the time the porpoises hit adolescence. Being that the cloud porpoises were and remain to be a peaceful and benevolent society, with a continued track record of tolerance towards diversity, those cloud porpoises who went through life adorned with sweater vests were merely treated as objects of curiosity. The common philosophy was "oh well, they can just put on sweaters made of clouds if it gets too cold."

For the time being this will be all the quoting of Face's work that I engage in. I hope those scant details will interest the reader in perhaps picking up that particular volume, and further their studies on these cetaceans. At the same time, I hoped that adherence to the "kill two birds with one stone" philosophy might prove to be of some avail, and while you are hopefully interested in cloud porpoises more than you were at the beginning of the above paragraphs, hopefully you'll also understand more the plot of our story as it continues below.

When a sweaterless cetacean ascended to the clouds, it was a surprise, but not a shock to those who had lived there long enough to be referred to as indigenous. This is the backstory on that:

The object of a previous discourse we were having regarded a woman named Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzenand how she had a conflict with the dolphins in her shower over some misinterpreted words. Therefore, she walked to the nearest beach and became an oceanic mammal herself, and set about remedying these problems. It took a while, but eventually she came across a coral reef and there enrolled in an Echolocation as a Second Language course taught by a hard-nosed bottlenose dolphin, who had heard all about our heroine's escapades. Thusly, he was initially inclined to fail her before class had even begun. Such are often the failings of education systems, where teachers might alter grades based on their opinions of the students. But our student earnestly voiced her contrition and insisted that whatever strife had been created was a result of some misunderstanding. Perhaps he could just tell she was honest, and perhaps it was because dolphins have always been known to be forgiving creatures given the chance, and perhaps he was just an honest educator, but whatever the reason, class began with a lack of grief on either side.

In the end, Echolocation proved to be fairly easy to learn. Sonically, of course, it sounds nothing like Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen's native language of English, which also happens to be mine, which is why , as you can tell, I use mostly what the Spanish refer to as Inglés and the Germans as Englisch, and the English as English, and the Canadians and Americans as English as well. Now, though Echolocation sounds nothing like the language which I shall hereafter call English, there are certain similarities between humans and dolphins that make the Dolphinian Echolocation easier for any human to speak than the dialect spoken by the flying mammals known as bats (mostly, of course, the variety of bats known as microbats). Both species have similar sized brains and are known to fornicate for pleasure, as opposed to reproduction. In addition, there is an ancient Greek legend that states that the first dolphins were actually humans that jumped overboard from a boat to escape the wrath of the god Dionysus. Hence, there has always been a sort of friendship and a generally positive working relationship between the two species. Not so much can be said for the state of the relationship between humans and bats. Not that it's a strained one, though wars have occurred, but not since the far distant past. It's just not so congenial. Aside from the relative ease with which a human might pick up Dolphinian Echolocation, there are some problems, namely with the words themselves. See; take a word like "watermelon". In English that combination of syllables when spoken forms a word that stands for a delicious type of fruit. In Echolocation that same word translates into an entire phrase that being "get pregnant and die." However, it is the relative ease of learning this strain of Echolocation, combined with the occasional hurdles, that makes it so fun for people to attempt education in this area. Besides, the payoff is usually great, as dolphins have always made for great friends, but are even better when conversation can be held.

And speaking of hurdles, our heroine leapt into action, bounding over many of them, both proverbial and physical, and swam at full speed through whatever language barriers she encountered, and passed the course with the proverbial flying colours, colours which also taught her to fly.

Upon receiving the certificate of completion and a bag of party favours, she threw a party in order to have a use for the favours, which included various balloons, candy, and those cone-shaped hats that have strings that you tie under your chin. But alas, party time had to end eventually, as it always does. In this case it was roughly three hours after the beginning of the party, for so eager was Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen to repair what she had so inadvertently broken. Tirelessly, meaning she did not become weary nor did she carry any tires with her, she swam about, apologizing to every dolphin she came across, and asking them to spread the word of her contrition on the part of herself, but also for any affront any human might have done to the dolphins, such as ensnaring them in the nets they used to catch tuna. See, the dolphins too loved to consume tuna, but they could grab it right from the sea and eat it fresh.

"Oh, would that we had such capabilities," she lamented. "We would drown in that sort of process, and by no means do we intend on bringing any dolphins up with the tuna." She hoped that last part was true anyway. But being the forgiving beings they are, the dolphins forgave her, and after this, human-cetacean relations were at an all-time high, and many collaborative efforts were undertaken. This led to cleaner oceans and ones that were generally better places to find oneself at any given time. Another consequence of the reduction of strain on this interspecies relationship was that dolphins became willing to share some of their recipes with people, and some great cuisine came out of this. Now, it came to pass that in these travels, word of the existence of the cloud porpoises came to the ears of Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen. What an intriguing world it seemed! Full of wonder and delight and the prospect of adventure it seemed for sure. For at this point there seemed to her three options. First, she could return whence she came, to her human home, and once more become human in a manner just as unexplained as her transformation to cetacean. Second, there was the option of remaining oceanic and exploring the underwater realm for a while. Surely many fascinating escapades were to be had here. But the third option was the one that really caught her attention. For here was a world that she had not heard of until this day, which she had the prospect of visiting. They would not miss her at home, as her house had been visited by a squad earlier in the day, who had deemed it a suitable location for a rave, which showed no prospect of ending in the near future. It was presumed that she had turned into a cake anyway, and no human has ever shown sympathy for a cake. In fact, it was in the midst of a famine in which a French Queen who was told that her peasants were starving was said to say "let them eat cake." We could lament the fate of cake eternally, but that would not be conducive to the continuation of our chronicle. Needless to say, she chose to visit the cloud porpoises because the humans assumed she was cake and were preoccupied with a rave and the sky seemed like a more fitting adventure for the time being, and there seemed to be a greater prospect of accomplishing her original goal of finding Don Henley, as the dolphins would surely have told her he was amongst them if he indeed was. She could always visit the sea again and see her friends. For now she yearned for the open air, but to still remain in her current form. As she left the sea for the sky, she waved to her newfound friends and hoped that the human race would be so willing to maintain positive relations as the dolphins were.

Empty my container of chocolate milk now is. Others shall soon come.

Chapter III

Now, Don Henley himself does not play a very major role in the advancement of the plot of our story, but for some reason our characters feel compelled to search for him, as in the case of Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen. Baritone Juicebox, in fact, also had a history of interaction with Don. Not so much in a personal sense, but oftentimes he would sit around and listen to "The Boys of Summer" repeatedly. The two had never met, and if they did meet in the future, it was in the future that was beyond the scope of our narrative here. Now, Bari was sitting on a couch, racking his mind. Maybe because he liked to imagine that he had met Don Henley, it seemed likely that he had indeed done so. If he had, that memory had gone on vacation, for he'd been searching for it for three days now. He just wanted some sort of proof. Had he met Don, or did he just imagine that he had because he had listened to his songs so much. If anything, he hoped that the memory and the proof that it would bring would at least be back by next Tuesday. As he searched through the myriad of memories in his mind, memories which encompassed the entire gamut of his experiences returned to him.

There was the time that his parents had taken him to an execution. It was the month of July, which is of course named after Julius Caesar, who was himself executed. There were several heretics to be killed that day. The first had been brainwashed into believing that he was playing a game of baseball. Conveniently, the execution was taking place in a baseball stadium, which lent a degree of credibility to the illusion. So, the man stepped up to the plate, in full uniform and helmet, and was met with a bullet in his heart, fired from one of the ten men holding rifles on the pitcher's mound. He died instantly, but was fortunate enough to realize that those were gunmen on the mound, not pitchers, and thus died a heretic. Good for him! It was a traumatic experience for him. His parents bought his sister a t-shirt. He went home and feverishly resumed his attempts to travel through time so that he might live with dinosaurs.

And so it was that memory followed memory, in a procession that included reminisces of just about everything his memory held, but no Don Henley! Alas, would that that remembrance just return early from vacation, as many people do when they're called into work though given time off. Nothing eluded him but that. He remembered his first pizza. It was plain cheese, but with several varieties of that dairy product used. Mozzarella! Cheddar! Parmesan! Colby! Swiss! Monterey Jack! And below that lay a delicious tomato based sauce, and it was all put on top of a freshly baked crust! If only that feeling could once more be recaptured, and sustained over a length of time. Happy must be the person who might achieve such a position. But Bari was not that person. There was, however, one moment of sustained happiness worth mentioning, and that was a similar situation to the one just described. A buffet it was called, and so he remained for one week straight. And just as suddenly as all this began, the parade of remembrances came to a grinding halt with one thought: He had never made a sports team that required trying out for. What woe is this, this continual rejection when all he sought was to join the other children in their recreational competitions. The thought of this jolted him back to reality.

"Father!" he screamed. "I need to put an end to this. I beseech of you, please let me join the others in their nocturnal recreation!"

The neighbourhood children, full of a carpe diem mentality, had recently formed an astral projection basketball league so that whilst their bodies rested, that intangible part of them left and shot hoops in the local park. At first they felt they had to sneak around, that their parents would never approve. But one by one, as all children sneaking out of the house are, they were caught. Surprisingly, there were no repercussions for this activity. Sure, it was subversive to disobey curfews and go out at night, but the parents at least thought they were being creative, and hey, if this took off, they could probably make some decent money. And isn't that what every parent desires? A child that is successful in some form of professional athletics? I believe so. And so it was that the parents, glad that their children sought spiritual as well as physical exercise, fully condoned this league and allowed it to continue. Bari was, however, always to be found on the opposite end of that rope. Several times he had tried to sneak out, but he was inevitably caught without fail. Not once did he get to join in the games. And this trickled down, much like Ronald Reagan's economics were supposed to. Because he was never seen at the courts, his peers ostracized him. Who was he to not partake? Did he consider himself above these games? If only they knew the truth! And he tried to explain, but as always in such situations it was to no avail. And why was it that he was always caught? The poor boy and his family happened to cohabitate with a myriad of ghosts, ghouls, apparitions, and other non-material beings, who, every time, would howl with rage at being woken up as Bari tried to leave. Sneaky though he was, they were quite sensitive and it was likely that any sound rising above complete silence would wake them up. If he wanted to play, the only choice available was to implore of his father to be allowed to go out. He needed to appeal to the part of his father that understood the escapist longings of the fourteen year old mind. Alas, to no avail this was, as his father's childhood memories and sympathies had undertaken a joint trip, and were absent without leave, and he was forced to remain in bed with these memories which haunted him. The memories themselves meant no harm, being that they existed in unchanging form. It was his fault for letting them torment him, and he knew it, but a small comfort that was. Outside he could hear the dribbling of the astral basketballs and the sweet sound of a ball entering a net. Such joy he would never experience, at least not in this context, with his peers around him, taking part in friendly competition.

Years later, when he went to study at University, hundreds of miles from home, he would recall those days. He would often think of how, four years later, he managed succeed in astral projection, and escape ephemerally the confines of his padre y habitacion y casa. All but two ghosts had moved out by then, and he had somewhere he wanted to go. He hadn't attempted the projection since his father's penultimate rejection of his asking, but it seemed it had been long enough and he knew about the relative absence of ghosts when compared to previous years. No basketball games were to be played, though he had somewhere to go. The other kids were long gone from the park, and not even the ghosts of their ghosts remained. The league had collapsed when a corporation seized upon the idea and formed their own league, inviting the best players from amongst Bari's peers to join them. The rest had their hopes dashed, and gave up the game out of hopelessness, eventually all taking up either drug habits, lives of crime, or extremely mundane office jobs. Even in his young age, Bari had seen a great number of romantic comedies, most of them written by a fellow named John Hughes. In fact, he had always hoped that Mr. Hughes was the one writing, producing, and directing his life. For a while, it seemed like that might be the case, and things were going his way. So when he took to the deserted streets, he walked to the house which he sought, and stood beneath the windows which he intended on throwing rocks at. Not a single violent intention was in his mind. Not as a protestor or a criminal would seek to break the glass of their enemy or the store in which they wanted to steal from. All he wanted was to have a pebble lightly hit the window and fall back down. That accomplished, the person residing in the room to which the window led would come rushing down the stairs and sneak out of their own house. From there, some form of adventure would ensue, most likely ending up with them having to run from the police or some comparable form of teenage shenanigans. It worked without fail in the romantic comedies, so why shouldn't it work for him? No reason. There was none at all, and so with full confidence he threw the pebble upwards. It then struck its target, and aroused the attention of the person residing therein. Unfortunately she disregarded it as a random noise, having no idea of what was going on below her. Later on, when she found out, she too, was disappointed in not having fulfilled the plot of a Hughes film. But, in this moment, the rock fell down, and grew large with disappointment, and crushed our poor protagonist. Today was not a romantic comedy. And worse yet was that it started raining as he pulled himself free of the burden which lay upon the wretched soul.

"Oh well", he thought. "I'll try again some other day." In the meantime, he started to head home. But somehow he lost his way on the road he had travelled so many times. Fortunately, whenever there is a problem there is an equal and opposite plot twist, and so it went for Bari. As he walked on, wandering aimlessly until he remembered where he lived, he stumbled upon a giant pair of antlers rising from the ground. In the days in which this story takes place, it wasn't uncommon for the giant deer which lived underground to sleep with their antlers rising out of the ground, in order to let them rest in the fresh air. Often they rose for miles into the atmosphere, and if you tread lightly enough, you could climb them without disturbing at all the deer to which they belonged. Isn't that neat?

That's a general idea of what it would have looked like. He climbed to one of the lower branches which sprouted off the main antler, and saw his home. What a silly man, how could he not remember? The path was so simple. Foolishness aside, he was at least now free to head back to the comfort of his body, and rest so that he might arise for another day of shenanigans. Cool! Now, speaking of antlers, I know of a place where a gallimaufry of antlers can be found, where such bony appendages abound. Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States of America, contained within a forest of trees, was a forest of antlers. It unfortunately has been cut down in the years between this story taking place and me writing it down. People like to do that with forests. I personally rather like them, but what would I know? I'm just a narrator, and not even an omniscient one at that. I don't even know everything which goes on in the life of my characters. It's not really my business. But my credentials as a narrator aside, we have a much more pressing situation to deal with. Antlers, unlike trees, cannot be planted. People did not know this until recently, and thusly took many liberties with harvesting the antler forests which once grew in abundance relative to their current predicament, though they were never as prevalent as trees. Now it's too late. Oh well, we'll talk more about antlers in a little while.
Chapter IV

We all know that when it comes to enchanted forests, there is a whole gallimaufry of varieties, but only two basic genera. Before we discuss that, I apologize for possible overuse of the word gallimaufry. I know I use it too much, but I just like how it sounds, and I'd like to reintroduce it into the common vernacular. So on that count I don't apologize. I just momentarily felt a little self-conscious, like that dream everyone has when they're a teenager that they end up going to school naked. There are two main varieties of enchanted forests. Remember the beginning of the paragraph? I hope so. I'm sure you know of the two basic types of enchanted forests. The first, because I'm putting the good news first this time, is the friendly sort, the type of place where you can go and talk to the wise old trees and garner such a multitude of advice, or merely voice your problems and have them heard by a good listener, or you can go and play catch with while they enlighten you with their myriad of wisdom. The second is a much more malevolent type, one that you enter and the trees leer at you and make you feel uncomfortable, and then start grasping at you with their branches and maybe throwing their fruit at you. Sometimes they grapple you with the hope of entangling and consuming you. Fortunately it was into the first variety that Bari floated into with his new friend.

As we mentioned earlier, Bari attempted to kill himself by jumping off the moon, and because the atmosphere of our Earth does not tolerate indecisiveness, reality had no choice but to split into three parts, with one of them being an existence where Bari had become a basketball. In his moment of doubt, two-thirds of him had wanted to live, and one-third to die. Of the two-thirds that wanted to live, one wanted to go back to Earth and the other did not, but the one that wanted to return home realized that no human would ever survive the fall from space, unless we completely changed the laws of physics. As a writer I am at liberty to do such a thing, but to make things interesting, I decided it would be fun to put evolution into work, and instead of reversing a natural law, I would take an existing concept and alter and speed up its abilities, and thusly avoid the legal fees associated with physics court. The concept of which we speak, is of course, evolution. It is a concept that many claim to be false, and to believe it is heresy. Balderdash says I! So far as I understand, this evolution thing is a process by which living beings adapt and transmutate over time to be fitter for survival. To be fit for survival is what Baritone desired in this moment. If he was not fit for survival, his odds of surviving would drastically decrease. Sure, he might get lucky, and though not fit, still achieve his goals. Look at our government. How many of them are fit to govern? Good odds for Bari you would think. But he's not running for office! He needs to live! And to live he needs to adapt! And to adapt he needs to be alive! And so he called out to he who had had given the world evolution, Charles Darwin to help him, and help he did.

But how so? Most living creatures would not survive, so to simply change species would not help. Could he grow a part that would protect him in the fall? Growing a parachute surely could have saved his life, thought it probably would have been useless after he finished falling, which he presumed would be the majority of his natural life. Besides, the choice was not up to him, and Charles hadn't much time to think before Bari smashed into the ground, and clarity of thought in such situations is a tough thing to come by. So, Bari became a basketball.

Basketball is a neat game. It consists of two teams of five players each running up and down a surface, throwing a ball back and forth to each other with the eventual goal of throwing it into a circle with a net hanging from it. It looks something like this:

Now, the championship game for an arbitrary local high school was being held outdoors, and in the final seconds the home team was down by one point. In a desperate attempt to win the game as time expired, one of the players heaved up the ball, but his aim was terrible and the course of the ball strayed so far from the hoop that it ended up a couple towns over. The good thing about this is that nobody saw where it went, and so it didn't seem so odd that a ball fell into the hoop. That ball, as we know, was our protagonist. But so far, anyone that is reading this, the player who threw up that shot, and I are the only people that know that. Odds are that that'll be the way things stay even to the end of our story. I don't hold it against the attendees of this game that they didn't notice. Would you guess that a basketball falling into a hoop came from space? While basketballs fall from space more often than most people notice, it's still a rare occurrence, and it's much more logical to assume that a ball falling into a hoop came from one of the players, as that happens quite a few times in every game. This boy, who had just won the big game for his team, was being lauded as a local hero. It was forgotten that he'd been one of the worst players on the team all year, because they were now champions. And though this praise was on false grounds, it was understandable that Arthur Crouton, for that was his name, would like to maintain his hero status. While he knew that he didn't make the shot, he didn't know exactly who did. Even if he came clean, there would be no explanation, and they might just revile him as a man out of his wits. So, he kept quiet, and pondered the issue. The fame would pass by soon enough anyway, and it was best to enjoy it while the perks were available. He'd never been one to be in the favour of anyone anyway, so why not take advantage of such an opportunity? No excuses were to be found, yet he still wondered at the nature of the truth, which, though he raked his mind, he could not find, until the basketball that sat on the table before him started talking to him. It went like this:

The night after the afternoon of the BIG GAME, Arthur sat in his living room, running through his mind the events had just passed, and basking in the glory of being recognized and being given free food and t shirts and trips to amusement parks, and while on the couch, he was working on transferring a prodigal sundae from the bowl in which it sat to his stomach. The basketball sat on the table before him, as he wondered if merely hours before he had passed the zenith of everything he was ever to accomplish, If nothing in the future would bring him more fame than "winning that game." Beyond the fame, he wondered if he would ever do anything worthwhile again. He at least believed that this was his first true accomplishment, and if anyone else claimed he had accomplished something, he always assumed that they were just trying to send him their pity, and he tore that up when he received it. One thing I'll say for him is that instead of basking in his own self-pity, he did think of ways he could bring himself out of such a state. He knew there had to be a better future for him, and surely there was somewhere he could go to find it. This town and its basketball titles just weren't the place for him. Being a human bestowed with no abilities beyond the normal scope of what is perceived as human perception, Arthur Crouton could not see the future, but he had seen a great deal of films where people would tell the future by staring at round objects. While they were usually crystal balls, that was something he didn't have at his disposal, and so he had to rely on his basketball, which he stared at for several minutes with a ferocity that might have even made a bear avert its gaze, and a ham its glaze, and while no visions of the future came, a voice began to emanate from the basketball, which would eventually tell him many things, though none of the future, for he only knew of the past and present, and even then only the events which directly pertained to him or those he had learned of secondhand (and those were hard to trust sometimes). Sports. Deportes. Setroped.

Bari sat on the table, musing over his own particular predicament. He was certainly glad to still be alive, but now that the survival section of his mission was over, he would have liked to have just become human again, but alas, that is not how things work. Evolution is generally accepted as being a linear process, ever moving forward, and attributes, especially those which had contributed to survival, were tough to rid oneself of. Little did he know, but he found himself in a similar predicament to Arthur. What bothered him more now was that Arthur was staring at him so intently.

"Why is it that you're staring at me?" he asked.

"I'm trying to see the future" was Arthur's response.

Also by this point, Bari was sick of his proximity to Arthur, who had failed to shower after the game, and had many foul odours emanating from him, so he began to levitate and thus continued the conversation.

"And you expect to see into the future by staring at a basketball?"

"Well, a lot of the time when people want to see the future, they look into round objects."

"Even still, looking at me, you're only going to see a basketball. They usually use crystal balls. While basketballs share one syllable of their name and a similar shape to crystal balls, overall the two species are drastically different."

"I suppose that's logical. But I figured there was a chance I might see into the future in you, and further, what logic is there to be had in a basketball that is speaking?"

Bari took a moment to ponder what Arthur had just said. He didn't know much about basketballs before he had become one, and he hadn't learned anything in the meantime, only that he was one. He knew the basics of the sport, and he thought he had known that they possessed no speaking mechanism. Surely they were not living creatures. Not a ball he had used had ever spoken to him, so he had to make the concession to Arthur that maybe it wasn't so unreasonable for him to expect illogical things from a basketball that had fallen from space and was now speaking to him. Still, though, that didn't give Arthur the right to assume that every basketball could see the future just because it was round. That was asking a bit much of the basketballs of the world, in his opinion.

What neither party knew was the true nature of basketballs. In most cases, the ones used in games are not living creatures. Cruel it would be to utilize something which is living to bounce off a floor and throw through a hoop. These basketballs are modeled after the fruit of a tree that the inventor of the game had seen whilst travelling. He had seen one of them fall from a tree and bounce upwards and into a hoop-shaped plant that sat nearby. This gave him the idea for the game, and he studied the properties of this fruit and figured out how to synthesize it, and they had a ball to play the game with. Later rules and complications came into the picture, but they don't really matter to us here. Of course you'd expect that fruit normally wouldn't still be a living being, just a fruit that you eat off a tree. But this is a special tree that we are discussing here. When the fruit of the basketball tree reaches maturity, it falls from the branch where it was raised and bounces away, having developed a hard skin that is conducive to bouncing. From there further development is optional. If they wish to keep their minds dormant, they may, and if not, they are free to develop minds, and even limbs. Bari was in the process of growing arms now.

And he began conversing with Arthur. They found that they had much in common. Similar upbringings, family situations, social situations, and such. Arthur had much that he could gain from interaction with Bari, who he found to be much like himself, though four years older. They discussed their favourite recreational activities, the story of how Bari had come to be in the situation he was now, and they even touched a bit on pancakes, among other lesser subjects, like the geopolitical situation of the world. What had incited Arthur's interest the most was Bari's tale of how he had strapped himself to a rocket, shot himself to the moon, and tried to commit suicide by jumping to Earth. See, Arthur often found himself possessed with such suicidal thoughts, but he lacked the creativity necessary to contrive plans such as Bari's. Hoping that he could glean some ideas from Bari, or maybe even put himself in the better scenario where he no longer wished to engage in those sorts of activities, he began to ask Bari about how all of this had come to pass, and so Bari, in response, began the following soliloquy:

"As I've told you before, I was a human before I was a basketball, aged twenty-two years. Towards the end of my studies in University I was walking in the forest one evening, and I came across an old rocket. In the days up to this walk I had become increasingly bent on ending my life, mostly on the basis that I had never thought to think through the scenario in detail. However, I could never think of a suitable method. Sure, I could've drunk Drano, or jumped in a river, or impaled myself upon a bayonet attached to a forklift, but all of those had been done before. I'd heard multiple cases of each of the above methods, and more. It seemed like the songwriting process, or how people claim the songwriting process to be, where they say it's pointless to write a new song because everything that could possibly be a new idea was in fact one that had been done before, most likely several times. But then I found this rocket. I never questioned why it was in the woods near this school. Maybe the school had some secret connection with the space program. Maybe they had their own space program, or intentions of starting the first college in space. Just think of the tuition money that could be gotten from that. But none of that mattered. From the moment I found it, the rocket was mine. And I knew what to do with it. I could still go out with artistic integrity, and give people a good show. So my plan was that i would wait until the night of my graduation, and amidst the revelry, I'd be the fireworks. It'd be grand, spectacular even. And I wouldn't ruin the celebration. I'd be blown apart and land far away from their shindig. I'd give them entertainment. That's all. So I graduated. It was simple. I sat through some speeches and was handed a diploma. After dinner that night, I snuck out to the woods and tied myself to the rocket, and then tied additional explosives to myself. Lacking another person to attach additional explosives to the additional explosives I had to break the pattern and continue with the plan. There should be plenty of fireworks this evening, I figured. Once I got the rocket started up, I lit the fuses attached to the fireworks attached to myself. When the fuse reached its end, I flew upwards, but the fireworks were duds, and failed to become explosive devices, instead becoming extremely silly looking jewelry.

As a result of failing to explode, I continued sailing upwards. "Oh, this is cool", I thought, as I entered space. I'd always wanted to go to space anyway. In fact, this was the beginning of my doubt. I did something I wanted to for once. Leading up to this it'd been all work, between my job and schoolwork, and by this time school had ceased to be what you'd think it'd be, that being studying subjects that interest you and eventually getting a job in that field. The culmination of all that was that I was doomed to return to my old job, with massive amounts of debt, and most likely end up getting laid off from there anyway. But when I entered space, I thought that maybe it wasn't all so bad, it was all just the scenarios I had put myself in that weren't the ones I wanted to be in. But for now I was where I wanted to be, and had no choice but to carry on for the time being. After all, I could still kill myself eventually. Why not explore space a bit first? So, I held my breath and made an atmosphere for myself so that I could breathe and be warmed while I floated towards the moon, which was slowly approaching. While I floated on, I contrived a new plan.

See, four years previous to this portion of my story, I had once embarked on a similar quest. I'm not sure about the area in which you live, but in mine towards the end of our secondary education, an event called a prom is put on. What that is, is an event where couples dress up in formal clothing and assemble in one place and dance and eat a fancy meal and dance some more. You pay an exorbitant amount of money for all this, but afterwards everyone loses their virginity. Of course most teenagers don't own their own tuxedos or fancy dresses that they'll only wear once in a lifetime, so a fairly large industry revolving around renting formal wear for functions like this, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other such functions popped up. Much like many of my peers, I went and rented some such garments to wear. I was hoping to get a green tuxedo with coattails and a ruffled shirt, but I didn't have a job at that point and so I was relying on my father's financial assistance to acquire this formal wear, and unfortunately he wouldn't allow such an oddly coloured suit, assuming that it needed to be black. I was however able to get the coattails and the ruffles. In the end, it was the ruffles that did me in. it turned out they were possessed. Well, the whole suit was possessed but the ruffles were where the neurosis had made its headquarters. "

Arthur had never dealt with any experience like that. He had no idea that a piece of clothing could be possessed. Sure, he'd heard the priests talk about getting demons out of people and he'd even seen a movie about someone that was possessed and was exorcised. So many unbelievable things were happening to him this day. So many, in fact, that he decided for the moment to suspend all disbelief and just believe everything. Later on he would find a balance and he would begin to think things through before he decided whether or not he believed in them. But for the moment he would believe. Luckily, Bari was telling only the truth. That was his nature. Even had he known Arthur would have believed anything, he wouldn't have taken advantage of that. Well, maybe. But only if it was to convince him that some sort of extremely preposterous notion was true. He was at the point in the story when it was up to him to, not exorcise, but exercise the demon. This was how he told it:

"See, this was an odd type of neurosis. I've been possessed a few times. It happens fairly frequently to everyone. In most cases, it's just some lonely bacteria that want someone to talk to for a while. You know, rather harmless stuff. Of course, as with any disease, there's always going to be more serious cases. A neurosis itself can't kill you but it can lead you to extreme self-harm. So there I was, I was stuck in a formal war with formal wear that would only wear me down if I fought and tried to remove it from my body, and for some reason it was obsessed with killing itself. The neurosis was kind enough to remain dormant for the entire prom, and actually the entirety of the after party. After the prom we all went to a friend's house by a river, and there danced the night away and sat in the street and by the river. A sort of last hurrah before we all went our separate ways, into what adults tend to refer to as real life. I think that what allowed the neurosis to activate was that my own thoughts started heading downwards. Of course it was a triumphant night, but it signaled an end. Sure, I still had the summer. The end of high school wasn't the end of the world, I wasn't so foolish as to believe that, but there was something bothering me still. I think what it came down to was that that evening was a letdown. All the movies told me that it would be the greatest night of my life, and while I did enjoy myself on the whole, much better nights had been had, and hopefully much better nights would continue to be had. So, I sat by the river all night, pondering many things worth pondering, but for a moment I allowed my thoughts to sink downwards. And of course this resulted in the neurosis being awakened or activated or whatever the term is for when a neurosis leaves its hibernation and takes control. And lo! What did it want to do? Kill itself. But where a neurosis can't kill a person, it can convince a person to kill themselves, and have the parasite die with the host. This one was bent on dying in a very specific manner too. It wanted to drown in the Pacific Ocean. At this point I certainly hadn't the money for a plane ticket, and I had no car. The only means of transportation I had was my bicycle. I convinced it to let me finish high school at least, so I'd only count as the suicide statistic and not the dropout one, and when school ended I headed west. My country, when poorly drawn, looks like this:

I lived at point A, and the destination was point B. As you can tell, it took a while, but I finally got there and rode my bike straight into the ocean. There's quite a bit I could tell you about that journey, but I think I'll save it for later. The instant I was immersed in water, in the same formal wear I'd been wearing for weeks, the neurosis died. Luckily for me I wasn't going down with it. The instant it died, I was released. I was just left soggy and alone several thousand miles from home. So, I made the homeward journey, and upon arriving, continued life as normal, and decided that for the time being there were other means of coping with my failures. I played music, I wrote books. Anything that would exorcise my own built in neuroses worked for me. But, as I explained, in the span of four years, I relapsed.

As I floated towards the moon, I understood that neurosis. I wanted to end my life, and I wanted to do it in a dramatic fashion. Even if nobody else was to see it, I wanted to satisfy my own creative longings, and do it to the best of my ability. I had failed at drowning and I had failed at blowing myself up. The cliché states that the third time is the charm, and while clichés tend to be pretty cliché, I think that they, like stereotypes, have a basis in some sort of truth, so I was willing to give it another shot. While I had had a minor life affirming moment the moment I entered space, I soon realized that I had nothing to go back to, or so I thought. Clear was one adjective that did not sum up my thoughts at that time. In fact, looking back, if I had been asked to fill out a job application in that moment, and they asked for one word to sum up myself, no synonym of intelligent was eligible for use. Only foolishness was to be found. But, in my mind, I just needed something more dangerous. I'd be at the moon soon. I could kill myself there. But I did want my body to rest forever, or at least until it finished decaying, in the waters of my home planet. I figured my odds of landing in water were pretty good if I jumped from the moon, as the majority of the Earth, as you know, is made of water. As far as I knew, nobody had ever survived jumping from the moon, but also as far as I knew, and I didn't know very far at all, nobody else had ever jumped from the moon. But that was even better. I'd be the first. I'd be lauded for my creativity if I was discovered. To ensure that the whole story would be discovered, I resolved to buy a t shirt from the moon. Oh, this new plan was wonderful. These failures were all the work of Serendipity, that sly wench.

So I jumped, as planned. Up until now, everything had gone as I had wanted, but then I got in the way. I had the epiphany that perhaps it would be nice to continue living. That there might be solace in death, but it'd be awfully boring. If I kept living I could at least garner a reputation as a tortured artist, and maybe even get a place on the college speaking circuit, for having done something so outrageous as having jumped from the moon, plus being the first person not sponsored by the government to make it to the moon. There was no way I could survive as I was, and so I adopted my current form, and so conveniently for you, won your championship. Now, here I am: a floating basketball, levitating and telling you my stories. Life really wasn't as bad as I made it out to be. For some reason when things weren't going as I desired I focused on the negatives, and it seems like they found their way into the story more than the positives. Oh well, none of it can be undone."

Only four people prior to Bari had ever transformed into basketballs. He did not know this. It wasn't a well-documented subject. Two of them changed back eventually. The two that didn't stayed basketballs of their own volition. Human life isn't for everyone, but if it is for you and you're stuck as a basketball, there were ways to change back. However, neither Bari nor Arthur knew any of them. This is what they did know, based on the information that they had compiled from Bari's story and from what Arthur had told Bari of his own predicament when they had held discourse earlier.

On Bari's end of things, he decided that he'd like to be human again. He didn't particularly enjoy basketball-ness, and though he didn't particularly enjoy humanity, it seemed like it'd be a worthwhile move to go back. He figured he had a better chance of learning to enjoy humanity than basketball-ness-anity. He briefly considered an attempt at becoming part basketball, part human, but he had seen a documentary once about people that were born part basketball, and they tended to be miserable, never being accepted into either society, except as circus freaks.

Now, let us give Arthur's point of view. The pinnacle of his tenure in this town was over. There was nothing more for him here, but he did want to live and get a chance to explore the rest of the world. He had won the BIG GAME for his team. SPORTS! His prom, the supposed best night of his life, had passed, with disappointment equal to Bari's. At this point he was guaranteed invitations to play basketball at a plethora of top-notch schools, but if he took that road it was also a sure shot that he would be exposed as a fraud, or a one hit wonder. If it came down to it, the chances were minimal he'd actually make another shot to win the BIG GAME. In fact, the chances were minimal that he'd make another shot. Actually, that comparison was a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad player. Just mediocre, especially for someone on the team. He was better than most people not on the team. And there weren't that many people on the team. So he was better than most. Only once he got to the higher levels he'd be playing much tougher the teams and odds were high he'd let his the team down. His fall from grace would not be a worthwhile exchange for the short time he would get to spend as a DEPORTES hero. BALENCESTO! Thinking about it now, the word Balencesto sounds like it could potentially be the name of a magic trick. Possibly a cheesy one, but a magic trick nonetheless. No quantity of cheese could spoil magic. It'd probably just enhance it, like it does the flavor of a pizza. Recently, Arthur's family had all been transformed into sea urchins, and he was left alone in the house. While the prospect of having a house that was all his was inviting, he had no means of keeping up with the bills, and the only way he could afford college would be a full basketball scholarship. We've already discussed what would probably happen if he ended up facing premier basketball teams, so I decided that I would put some ideas into Bari's head.

"Hey Arthur" he said. "Balencesto."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it sounds like a magic trick. Magico!"

Since Arthur agreed that balencesto could indeed be a magic trick, their agreement led it to become one. The trick was this: it put an idea in their collective consciousness.

And so suddenly they knew how Bari would once again become human and how Arthur would be able to discover an honest and fulfilling life. Off they headed to the nearest enchanted forest.

Swoop!
Chapter V

At some point earlier on, we had discussed a few ideological concepts and even some silly plot lines. This section covers one of those particular plot lines.

Remember how Bari's body parts washed up on the shore of an island once? If not, well, they did. You can go back and refresh your memory if you'd like. I'd tell you where to look but then I'd have to change the page number of the location of that paragraph or paragraphs for every edition of this printed (and I do expect many to be printed, of course). So, just try and find it. Hopefully you remember anyway. You don't have to reread the whole book though. I mean, you can if you want. But it'd be pointless, and if you forgot the first time around chances are decent that you might forget again. So, just reread the portion we were talking about. After you do that, you can read on to the next part, where I'll start rambling about what you just read.

Naturally, since Bari's body parts washed up on a shore, the islanders assumed that their God was returning, just in need of a little bit of assembly, and perhaps a couple of AA batteries. Wrong o! It was just a suicidal young man who had until this point been successful in his suicide attempts. I think it'll be funnier if we don't let them in on this secret though.

This didn't all happen due to chance. It was engineered, under the strictest standards and the tightest surveillance possible, by the God who was credited with ruling the island of which Bari found himself residing, in pieces. But in pieces he wouldn't be for too much longer, for our "god" has decided to pull a prank, for prankster and deity often are synonymous. And before the astonished eyes of the islanders, and before the astonished I's of the eyelinders, the various body parts began to float skywards and assemble themselves, roughly five feet in the air. Being that his body parts were once again whole, that being became conscious once more, and also very confused. He did, however, feel extremely refreshed, as if he had just gotten the best sleep of his life, which he had. Once conscious, he of course remembered everything that had come to pass right up to the moment of death. After that all was black, and not the least bit of a dream could he recall, so deep was his rest. From the moon he had leapt, and through space floated, and was then aided into the atmosphere by an armada of giant squid, and from there gravity took over. From there he fell at an exponentially increasing rate, and had plunged into the sea, as was originally intended. Oddly, this was the first time he could recall making a plan for something so important and having it work out. But in the end even this was foiled. The fall failed to kill him though, for he was distracted at the very last moment, by the seemingly mundane but ever so tempting thought of the consumption of a large plate of nachos. So distracted was he that he forgot he was supposed to die. But, it is said that things have a way of working themselves out. Though his absentmindedness had momentarily kept him from his goal, a passing shark was a quick reminder of what he had set out to do. Massive it was, of the species known as hammerhead, if you were curious. It was wearing sunglasses. Those must have been difficult to construct. The shark ate him, or started to at least. It got as far as having torn his body to pieces before a bowl of nachos floated by, and he chose that over the rank, bitter flesh of our protagonist. How ironic it was that all Bari had wanted at the moment of his death was now being consumed by the one who had killed him. Turns out he had once more failed at suicide, as it was the shark and not himself that had killed him. At least this time would be good fodder for a show during a future shark week.

The shark, content with the nachos, swam away, and the current carried Bari's parts across the watery highway, and to the beach which was the location of our discussion a couple paragraphs above this one. Vengeful god was quite satisfied with Bari's role as a pawn in his prank, and was currently enjoying several carefully measured oodles of fun, replete with a whole group of barrels of laughs on the side.

"Look at this, "he said to everyone on the beach, and brought up a live video feed of what was going on at the moment on the island.

What was happening was that Bari was currently floating above the beach, regaining his consciousness, and remembering what had passed while the islanders were marveling at him.

"(Laughter onomatopoeia)", said the god. "They think he's me, what a riot"

And how all those vacationers laughed. They hadn't had a hoot like this in ages, not since the middle ages in fact, and we were now in the upper middle ages. Could these people really believe that this goofy looking man was one and the same as a moderately powerful immortal magician who was able to pass himself off as a deity? Apparently so, was the answer to that.

As with everything that happens in the present, we can also look for similar instances in the past. Many there were, but there was one that was particularly funny, until it caused a group of people to go mad and attempt to conquer the world, and in doing so, wipe out every indigenous culture they came in contact with. You see, there had been a man once, and he had had some pretty neat ideas about being nice to people and sharing and that kind of stuff and was also supposedly performing magic tricks like walking on water. Pretty cool, I thought. So it probably was for the best that he spent his entire adult life walking around the desert and telling everyone these ideas, and as it turned out, they were pretty popular. Problem was, they went against some of the prevalent ideas at the time, and so they had him executed. Well, what do you know, but a couple hundred years later, it's been decided that this man is a god, or at least his father is a god , and they're trying to claim his blood is wine, just because he had some decent ideas and could do some magic tricks. Funny thing was, that this man was a nephew of the "god" who was pulling these pranks on Bari. This "god" surely enjoyed playing the prank where he convinces people that other people are incarnations of the divine. It gets old for us, but not him. In this case, though, he liked most that the islanders would most likely stop eating him. Certainly it would be rude to try and eat your god while he was there, so for the time being, they would most likely have to return to normal diets, and that once a week meal of god would be replaced by more respectable foods, such as sandwiches and vegetables.

"Lechuga!" was Bari's initial thought, and he floated down to the ground. Then being confused at being beheld, he asked "could you please explain what is happening now"

Apparently there was some sort of misunderstanding, or perhaps his words became misconstrued as the floated across the air, and underwent a metamorphosis which gave them some sort of divine nature, because when they reached the ears of those around him, they all began clamoring for forgiveness and for wishes and blessings and such. What a way to just multiply confusion, when our protagonist wanted nothing but to divide or subtract or any sort of function that would lessen the current disorientation. To know his whereabouts or why he was being treated so oddly didn't seem like a huge favour to ask, but, you know the nature of those we are dealing with, or you should at this point. Bari was smart enough to realize by this point that not a single answer was to be gotten from these people, and to ask more questions was just to be asked for more blessings. And so he turned to eavesdropping, and had much better luck in doing this. In fact, the first conversation that he turned his ear towards gave some instant results.

"Mom, why are we standing on the beach looking at this silly-looking man? I want to go home and eat nachos."

"Son, we are witnessing a significant event in history here. Our god has blessed us by returning from the sea, where we have always flushed our refuse."

"Are you saying that god is refuse, mom?"

"No, but he gets mixed in after we eat him."

"Why do we eat him?"

"Tradition says we have to"

"Mother, this all sounds ridiculous. I don't believe in this god. I bet that if your god exists, it's not this man. God is probably just a moderately powerful magician whose been fooling you with magic tricks, and you fall for it because they entertain you."

"Son, that's far too much thinking out of someone your age! I cannot believe you would think such rubbish. We raised you well, Barnabus. We raised you to be a god fearing man, not a heretic. And worse yet, you're saying these things right in front of him. I mean, I know he can see and hear you all the time, but to do so right in front of him is particularly disrespectful."

"But I don't believe that it's him. I don't believe in god anyway. Wait, you said that he can see and hear me at all times?"

"Yes"

"Well, if he exists, he's gross. I don't like him."

Bari took this all in. He didn't mind being told he looked silly. He'd always thought that himself, and it had to be taken to new levels now. All that had been happening was excessively absurd. He would be laughing too if he was that boy. That mother made no sense though. Could they really think he was a god? Well, if that was what they thought, then there was only one thing for him to do. Abuse that privilege.

"Excuse me, could someone please bring me a plate of nachos?"

This was his first act as god, and certainly the best request any god ever had or ever would make of its subjects. Nachos were brought forth and he set about consuming them with the full voraciousness of someone who had never eaten before, and considered his next moves.

These are the options which he considered:

1: He could go on living as a god on this island

2: He could leave

By this point he figured he was alive again, and while death was a nice sleep and a pleasant respite, he would stick with normal sleep and vacations and such. He'd have plenty of time to die later. So, with regards to each of the above options, he did what any rational being would do and compiled a list of pros and cons for each.

The best parts of staying were:

1: The nachos

2: Not having return to his home and find a "real job"

3: Admittedly, being worshipped had its moments where it was fairly fun

The best parts of option two were:

1: He could make a point of at least finding a place to live where he could watch the World Series every year, and the Super Bowl and Stanley Cup as well!

2: If he went somewhere and decided that he wanted to go out and find a job, he could put deity on his résumé, and not be lying. Maybe some of the islanders would even be references. Perhaps there were even better jobs out there for him in the same field.

The worst parts of option one were:

1: Being worshipped, though fun for the time being, could get old after a while, especially when adoration became adulation, and their slavish devotion became overbearing.

2: He might get away and find the time to do something that was actually useful at some point in the future, something he would never get to do if he were to stay and sit on a throne and issue decrees and declarations and such.

3: Things could get to the point where he eventually needed to do a favour or perform a miracle, and he wouldn't be able to pull through, and thus be exposed for being the fraudulent deity he was. He knew a couple card tricks, but nothing so impressive as to make himself seem actually holy.

The worst things about option two were:

1: re-read the best parts of option one. They are pretty much the things that are bad for option two.

As Bari mulled these thoughts over, he mulled some spices for the sake of having some busy work, and eventually came to the conclusion that, in the long run, he'd be best off leaving the island. This was also evident considering that the islanders had a habit of eating things that they also worshipped. For the present, he was safe, as they were still had some reserves they had culled before, but that store was eventually bound to run out, and what would he do then? He would be fodder for their stomachs, and he had a much more limited supply of flesh than the magician that had pranked him. All that was left was to decide upon a means of escape and a place of refuge. He was, after all, stranded on an island that he didn't know the location of, and on top of that, was a terribly indecisive person by nature. Therefore, these matters were all a bit difficult to resolve. In fact, three hundred years passed before he made his decision on how he should leave. By this point, he would have had nowhere to go, or at least nobody that he knew anywhere. But lo! It was a mere matter of hours after he had made up his mind when the Earth passed through a black doughnut hole in space, and the most recent 299.9166666666666 (the six goes on forever) years where erased, and all his plans and memories of them were erased with the years. And so, 299 years were gone, as well as eleven months. It was now the one month anniversary, the second time around, of his being re-assembled and the beginning of his life as a god. Bari, as he often did for recreation, was swimming in the Shaq infested waters off the coast of the island, when a porpoise fell from the sky, crashing into him, and causing him to plunge towards the bottom. Now, luckily, a human has a lower density than water, and floats in it. This ever so slight density differential probably saved his life, for his swimming was rather weak. He had been practicing quite a bit though in the past month. So, Bari's body gradually made its way to the surface, where the porpoise was waiting for him, full of apologies, and Bari met her, full of confusion, and they began a dialogue. Bari was mostly confounded about the reasons that could cause a water dwelling animal such as a porpoise to fall from the sky, but these initial questions were lost in a swarm of apologies from the mouth of the porpoise. Bari, of course, forgave her, and better than an apology, she gave him a means of escape. This porpoise was, of course, Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen, whose story we had discussed at some length earlier, and she offered to him refuge in the abodes of the cloud porpoises. This offer would have normally been very tempting anyway. The cloud porpoises seemed much more interesting than his old home, and maybe he would be able to get a decent start there. He knew nothing about the species, but surely there were some books with some information somewhere. Maybe at least a paragraph in an encyclopedia that was in the local library. He'd just have to be careful not to get caught there, as it was generally assumed that he was omniscient and it would deal a serious blow to his credentials were he caught in such a place whose existence was based around the gaining of information. Furthermore, Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen also informed him that the society of humans wasn't so much an option anymore, as civilization was in shambles due to World War 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971. Somewhere along the line, in the past month, some person had gotten a decent idea, but things had escalated, and a decent idea became a terrible war. One man had simply wanted to arm wrestle his friend, but a passerby who witnessed this thought the losing side was in trouble, and had jumped into the fray to defend the one who he thought was being assailed. One by one, more people joined in, and soon the world was at war. Arm wrestling had been replaced with the standard mechanisms of war, and most major cities were in ruins. The entire thing has lasted only two weeks, due to how fast things moved in the current world, and so a fortnight was able to bring ruin to civilization, and those that were left were now left regrouping. Bari was of course welcome to go back, but compared to humans, she said, the cloud porpoises were doing exceedingly well. Even still, Bari, as we mentioned, is quite the indecisive character, and so he said that while he leaned towards taking her up on that offer, to give him two chapters to ponder his options. So, if she would do him the courtesy of once more falling from the sky at the genesis of chapter eight, he would have an answer for sure. This seemed reasonable, and she agreed that she would leave the clouds shortly before chapter eight, and try to arrive in that blank space below the end of the chapter seven, and there she would walk over to chapter eight and meet him.
Chapter VI

Cowz! Four and a half of 'em! That is what Bari and Arthur saw, standing upright and regal, in the center of a ring of giant antlers, for they had entered the forest of antlers which we had discussed briefly earlier. And all sorts of antlers were here to be found. Birch, oak, pine, and redwood were all present, as were many others. Now, before we discuss the exploits of our protagonists in this region, I feel it is important to discuss, at least briefly, the history of the area, and thusly give you an understanding of what it is that they stumbled into.

I had mentioned before that there was a forest of antlers in a region of the United States called the Pacific Northwest. The area is called this because it borders on an ocean that was known as the Pacific in those days, and is the northwestern part of the country. Self-explanatory, yet I felt the need to explain. As far as antlered forests go, this was the last one remaining in the world, so far as I know. Maybe we'll find one later and thusly prove that last sentence wrong. We'll see. But I think this is the only one Bari goes in in this narrative. Maybe we'll find another later and thusly prove that sentence wrong. We'll see. Right now, he was roughly one hundred miles from the coast of the Pacific Ocean, in a state that was known as Oregon, which was the ninth largest out of the fifty that currently made up the country. In these days, forests were in abundance, and so finding one wasn't so rare. Later on, many of them would be cut down in a process known as deforestation, to make space for roads, houses, shops, and such things. Now, if you've never seen a forest, what it is is a large group of trees. If you've never seen a tree, that's unfortunate. They're plants. You should know what they are. Some of them bear fruit, such as apples. When they gather en masse that space is called a forest, or woods, because trees contain wood in their bodily structure. These forests are generally pleasant things. Most of the time you can stroll in them and find yourself away from civilization, and pass away the hours with picnics in the shade or climbing the trees. Of course, that's just my opinion. Many people I know don't care for forests. They see them as dirty and repulsive, and often dangerous places. They prefer to tread on paths that are paved, and not natural, and are frightened by the prospect of encountering any sort of wildlife. Conversely, they tend to prefer cleaner, more hospitable institutions such as shopping malls, which are in essence forests comprised of mercantile establishments, and populated, while open, by consumers.

Now, while all trees are indeed living beings, and are thusly prone to the travails which befall all those who live, and are to a degree sentient, it is only some trees that are given the gift of speech and the ability to interact with their surroundings. A forest where enough of the trees possess those special abilities can be known as an enchanted forest. I honestly don't know what percentage is required to attain enchanted status, or if any additional privileges are bestowed upon forests with that classification, but the occasional, isolated talking tree will not do to gain that status. I mentioned earlier that while there exists a myriad of types of enchanted forests, there are only two basic genera, which may be summed by their characteristics and personalities, general disposition and demeanor, and such.

Unfortunately there are many trees that possess rather negative attitudes. And while this is unfortunate, you can't really blame them, especially since the percentage of people with these attitudes is much higher. You should also take into consideration that trees have not always received the best treatment from humans, while the trees have generally always helped out people and provided them with their resources, even sacrificing themselves so that their wood might be used for shelter and warmth, and even be ground up and used as stationery, which is indeed generally stationary, you should know. It is generally towards humans that these trees generally direct their malevolence, and even then it is not always, as they are generally decent judges of character, and can tell which people deserve to be taunted. Of course, there are those rotten apples, just as in every walk of life, which ruin the reputation of talking trees in the eyes of the world. Now, despite this, there still remain a very hefty percentage of trees that have weathered this abuse, and emerged all the stronger and with better character. These trees are generally not aggressive, and will only act violently to defend themselves in cases of emergency. Trees of like attitude tend to group together, much like the concept of "red" and "blue" states in the United States, where red means the people like one terrible political party while other people like another equally awful party. These red states tend to congregate in certain regions, and the blue ones do likewise. There are purple areas where the two mix, and these are known as swing states. Likewise, there are these areas found in enchanted forests, where benevolent and malevolent trees intermingle.

Of course, it was into a forest of benevolent disposition that our protagonists wandered into. Somehow the idea was put into their collective mind that within this forest there would be present someone who could help them. Naturally, I'm sure there are plenty of helpful beings out there, but this area was conveniently located, and just seemed like the place where the natural course of their journey would take them. Whether or not there actually was someone that could be helpful here was yet to be found out, but the next paragraph shall reveal further truths.

Arthur had known about this forest for much of his life, but his parents had forbidden him from travelling in it because they claimed that it was dangerous, and odds were that he would be eaten if he entered it. They were of that group we talked about that preferred shopping malls. Now that he actually got to experience it, this forest actually seemed like a pretty neat place. No, it wasn't bad at all. In fact, he liked it much more than the places they had recommended he spend his time. And so they walked up to a path that clearly led into the forest, and began following it. It was three days before they came to the center of the forest, where they found the cowz!. Obviously, most of their time was spent walking, but every once in a while they would stop and eat some doughnuts or apples from the bushes in order to provide themselves with food, for they had brought none. In fact, as far as provisions go, they had really shortchanged themselves and not prepared at all. They had just left once they had gotten the idea. While they ate, they would often sit in the shade of the trees and with them hold discourse. The friendship they developed with the trees certainly proved to be fruitful, both for their stomachs and their minds, and when they were out of the forest and on the open plains, they would often wish that the local vegetation was as hospitable as that which was found here.

Of course, walks through woods are often peaceful. For the most part this one was, and was mostly devoid of all life but that which was known as flora. Before they came to the center, to the antlers, to the cowz!, all they encountered as far as fauna goes was a single bear. A black bear it was. Far removed from any river wherein might be found any salmon. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. Only about fifteen per cent of the black bear's diet is meat anyway. And vegetation was to be found aplenty here, of course. This was a species not especially known to be fickle when it comes to dietary habits, but, as with any generality, there are exceptions to be found. An omnivore this was not. Perhaps a pizzavore. No, the truth is sandwiched between those two specifics. An omnivore eats a large variety. A pizzavore eats only pizza. This was somewhere between. And while Bari and Arthur found this bear eating a slice of pizza, it was also known to eat Mexican food, and had recently ravaged a burrito field nearby. In fact, it was this act which had led it to flee to the forest. Those villagers growing the burritos would never find her here. She was sure that the trees would offer protection, both in the form of shade and in the guise of beings who would lie on her behalf. And so it was, when the villagers had scoured the region, and stumbled on the forest, they had inquired as to whether or not a bear had been in this vicinity in the past few days, and the trees had said no, and who would doubt the word of a tree. Truthful they were known to be, for honesty is generally the best policy, but there were lives at stake here, and no steak would be sufficient as a bribe when lives were at stake. So this bear was left alone to forage for pizza in peace.

Oh, but peace was not extant for all present. Sure, they had a piece of pizza, but that only brought peace to their digestive systems. So it was with high hopes that they asked this bear for advice.

"Oh bear", said Arthur Crouton, "Might there be present within the confines of this forest any sort of conifer who might upon us confer advice as to the solution of our current predicament?"

"Certainly", replied the bear. "There are many beings alive within this forest, and any sentient being is able to give advice, if advice is what ye seek."

"Advice would be helpful", piped Bari. "But what we seek more is to be given a mission of sorts. To be given a means, to achieve the end of me being freed from the coil of basketballosity, and for my friend Arthur to find a new start, away from the false fame he had once found."

"That", said the bear, "I cannot give. For no missions have I. But if you reach the center of the forest, and I have no doubt that you will, for it is only a matter of a nonchalant walk, you will find some very wise ones who are much more likely than I to have within their minds some sort of mission."

The bear then shat confetti, for that is what it did. Taking a swig off a container of chocolate milk it possessed, it wished our protagonists the best, and saw them on their merry way, and returned to devouring the pizza it had picked from one of the trees.

Now, many of the trees in this forest, at least in the outer regions, were but whippersnappers, and as such were not as gifted in the giving of advice that many trees of enchanted forests are renowned for. But the conversation was still pleasant, and a nice distraction from their meandering. For though they were not quite sages yet, these trees were surely on their way to achieving such a status, and at the very least, their conversation was entertaining. Somehow, the trees, though far removed from human doings, were very much aware of the latest happenings in the world of humans. They knew the exact standings in every sport, though at the time, it was hockey and basketball season. They generally liked hockey more. I commend them on their great taste. And while they did have some great conversations, and did acquire some advice, it was not until they reached the innermost regions of the forest, the oldest parts, that they began to really accumulate all sorts of wisdom from the trees, and even some apples to boot. Now they were rather confounded when they reached the very innermost region, the part furthest removed from those borderlands where the trees often saw humans walking upon the outskirts, and the trees began to intermingle with antlers. Gradually, as well, the antlers became more prevalent, and the very center was comprised of nothing but antlers. No sign of flora was there. Skimpy antlers these were not. They were not merely the appendages that grow out of the heads of deer and like animals. These were beings unto themselves. Not plants, but not animals. A category of their own you might say. This is a subject whom has not been covered in much detail in scientific circles, but is very much worth reading up on, for sure.

Of course, I bet you don't know much about this type of antler. The general tendency is to assume that they are merely horn like appendages which grow out of the heads of various particular animals. Now, many antlers are just that. But, in the old days, there were many antlers which fell from the heads of those animals which once sported them, and implanted themselves in the ground, and finding a home there, thrived and grew for the rest of their natural life, and when they died, they became food for those that inhabited those regions. These antlers are known as farcinnious, and are cousins to the antlers which grow on the heads of animals. Unfortunately, though they are alive, these antlers have no means of reproduction, and have thus become extinct in the days in which I live. Excessive harvesting lead to their demise, and while you might view this as some insane environmentalist metaphor, it is in fact a very sad truth. These beings which once graced the skylines of many a forest are now dead to the world, and shall never be seen again. For some reason, when animals now shed their antlers, they refuse to implant themselves in the soil of the earth. Perhaps they fear the same fate which befell their ancient counterparts.

Oh, how the world has changed over the years. So many new species have we. And while they too are wonderful, it is very important not to forget those who inhabited this world in the days of yore. While evolution has granted us many wonderful creatures, still we must honour and mourn the fates of such species as cloud porpoises, farcinnious antlers, and cowz!. Cowz!, like farcinnious antlers, are extinct now. The exact cause is not known to us, for their flesh was not pleasant to the palette, and neither was the taste of their milk. They seem to have died out of their own accord, perhaps out of a lack of desire to continue living in the word that we inhabit. To you, though, I bet the name cowz! seems familiar. Perhaps you know of an animal called the cow. I bet you do. They produce a meat called beef, and a beverage called milk. The two species came from a similar ancestry, but due to evolution, eventually chose to trod different paths. The cowz! grew a fifth stomach within themselves, as well as a second head. In addition to these physical characteristics, there came the abilities of speech and flight, as well as the psychic ability which allowed them to see the future. It might have been this gift of foresight which led to the demise of the cowz!. Many of them, looking into the future, might have seen what befell the Earth, and despaired, and sought the same end that Bari had at the beginning of our narrative. In addition to this, the cowz! favourite food was antlers, and the antlers going extinct might have set a precedent for our dear cowz!.

Fortunately for our protagonists, ice cream does make you happy, and in addition to this, the cowz! had not yet gone extinct. Thus, they were happy for the time being, though maybe a bit fatter, and able to get a bit of aid from the cowz! They were able to aid Bari and Arthur in their quest by giving them a quest, for that is what they needed, or wanted, at this moment. Though perhaps different on the surface, the goals of one who has been turned into an anthropomorphic basketball and desires to once again become human, and one who desires freedom from an old life are actually quite similar, and a similar mission is then able to solve both problems at once. Though similar, these tasks are nonetheless arduous, and an easy journey, such as this stroll through the woods they took, cannot be expected. And just as I'm telling you this, the four and a half cowz! that were present in the forest descried the very same facts to our protagonists. In doing this, a quest was laid upon Baritone Juicebox and Arthur Crouton, one which they would gladly embark upon, for it was upon this quest that they placed their hopes for the future. It would require of them that they leave the comfort of the forest, leave far behind the wonderful conversation of the trees, of the cowz!, and face the unknown. Perhaps there would be just as much wisdom to be acquired from the creatures they would encounter. Perhaps only conflagrations would be found. Perhaps though, this was the essence of a journey, and it was indeed a journey that they sought.
Chapter VII

There is a terrible affliction which befalls many people, and is known as insomnia. The prefix in means a negative, it denotes the un, the anti, the against. In addition, somnia refers to the state of sleep, and so insomnia refers to the inability to sleep. The person so afflicted has difficulty falling asleep, or once so, remaining in such a state. Baritone Juicebox suffered from this very affliction. Perhaps it is on the basis that I too suffer so, or maybe I'm sadistic and want to take out my travails upon my characters, but nonetheless, Baritone Juicebox often had trouble falling asleep, and would thusly be termed an insomniac. It wasn't particularly enjoyable. He would have liked to have been able to fall asleep when he so desired, or at the very least, when he was tired. But out of this some creativity was culled, and he often did excellent work whilst waiting for his tickets into the amusement park of sleep to arrive in the mail of his mind.

Up until the point where he had launched himself to the moon, his life had consisted of the following: he had what was known as a job. At the same time, he had, from the age of five, been attending an institution known as school (escuala). School is a sort of establishment where members of our society gather, divided by age, skill level, and at higher grades, interest. Members of this society were required to attend school and hopefully receive an education until a certain age, after which schooling became optional. At the point where our story began, Bari had just graduated from University, which is a higher level of school that is indeed optional, though he was taught in his previous school that in order to get a job that he liked he would have to undergo further schooling. A silly process it seemed, but he bought into it. This university, though very fruitful for knowledge, was much less so in terms of his wallet, as it was for most people. Indeed, he, like others, was stuck paying for this school, and as such, being put into considerable amounts of debt. So, this education was supposed to prepare him for a job in the field of his choice. This job was supposed to be an agreement between an employer and an employee, where in exchange for labour provided, the employer would pay the employee an agreed upon sum of currency. A fair trade, it seems. Employer compensates for time and labour with a reward of money, which the employee can utilize to whatever ends he so desires. Upon his graduation, there was no prospect of finding a job in the field of his choice, not a single one that related to his studies, or one that even made him remotely happy. So, he was stuck going back to the position he had held through his last three years in school, which involved exorbitant amounts of mundane labour, so repetitive that it got to the point where when he looked back he could not differentiate between nights. Being told that he was stuck going back to this job, he considered many options, but out of that gallimaufry, he chose suicide. Silly, it seems, that so petty seeming a problem would encompass part of the reason one would choose to end their own lives, but often us humans become so absorbed in such minor details that we overlook the parts of our lives that encompass the rest of the week outside the forty hours we work. To Bari, there was no future because there were currently no jobs. Oh, how wrong he was. A future there was, but it was necessary for him to travel far from any time clocks and to seek out his own fortune.

But, wisdom was not his strong point, at least not yet, as we have seen, and so this is where the insomnia comes in. This job did not help him sleep, though it required much physical labour from him, as he was required to work all night and thusly attempt to sleep in the midst of the day, when the sun was at its brightest, and there was the most enjoyment to be had. On the days he did not work, he could not return to the schedule of most humans, the one he desired, and thusly missed out on many of the activities that they shared in. this only further drove him to madness, and caused him to be tired and irritable all the time, and so his mind was never all too clear, especially so when he came across a rocket laying in the middle of the woods. At one point he even developed an extremely high tolerance to deoxyribonucleic acid, and those trips no longer helped in sleep, and if that was no help, what could be?

And this insomnia was not the only reason he chose to end his life. Of course there were quite a few, as there should be for any decision so crucial as this. Whether any of them were high quality reasons is up to you to decide, but reasons he had, and provide them he did, and this was one of his primary ones. Some of these reasons, were, of course, a bit more private, and he wouldn't have willingly shared them with anyone, and so I will not break his confidence. Other causes we shall discuss later on. What matters most now is that he attempted suicide, failed, and thus decided upon a second suicide attempt. One of three things happened when he was about to enter the atmosphere of the Earth, and the one which we shall discuss now is that the Earth sensed that he wanted to live, but perhaps get away for a while, and so it rejected his attempt to gain entrance to the atmosphere, and instead sent him out into space.

When he flew back into space, he drifted for a period of time that neither him nor I know, for we measure time by the rotation of the Earth and by the Earth's rotation around the sun. Those two measuring devices were now negated, and so he drifted without knowledge of time, which is good, because time mostly serves to create stress, along with unnecessary focus on schedules and other such annoying implications. On and on he drifted through the vacuum-sea, without a set destination as he had before. He was able to survive because the Earth gave him a supply of air before his rejection, and eventually he came through that vast ocean and arrived at the Grilled Cheese Nebula, which is home to the four sided triangles.

These triangles were a rather interesting species. See, they, as the name implies, both had four sides and angles that added up to one hundred and eighty degrees. The dimensions that we live in are all integers, while they live in only one dimension, which is i.i is a term used to mean the square root of negative. So, to travel from their dimension to ours you would take the i dimension, square it, and then square it again, thus cubing it. This would put you in the first dimensions, from which it is a simple matter of addition or multiplication to attain access to the rest of our dimensions. Thusly, Bari must have floated into a calculator somewhere in space which had been engaging in just the right operations that would send him to the i dimension, and he was the very first person to do this. Lucky him.

It happened that the four sided triangles made their abodes not on any solid ground found on planets or moons or such objects, but they built them to float around space, always staying within the confines of the Grilled Cheese Nebula. Naturally, shops, parks, streets, and everything else you'd find in a city were designed in this manner, and with everything in a different place every day, getting anything done or even finding anything was a rather arduous task, unless it could be done within the confines of one's own home, or unless you had a solid grasp on mathematics and could thusly predict where places might end up at any given time, which was never worth the math involved. The good thing for the triangles was that they required no resources. They didn't eat or wear clothing, and everything they did as far as entertainment goes was within the space of their minds. They could have just as easily floated around space aimlessly for the duration of their lives, which was forever. Now this doesn't mean that they never did anything with their lives, and in fact, the exact opposite was true.

You see, space calculators were rather common finds in the Grilled Cheese Nebula, and the triangles had perfected the manipulation of these calculators so that they could use any combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and squaring, in addition to a whole gallimaufry of mathematical functions to travel anywhere in time or space and between an infinite amount of dimensions and universes, and as such, they had accumulated vast stores of knowledge, which they held fast within their one hundred and eighty degrees. But, like food bought and never consumed, this knowledge just sat on the shelves of their brains and rotted, and they thus donned the guise of the reclusive genius, accumulating knowledge but never making use of it or sharing, which, we are told, is caring. And thusly they came across as rather callous, and even selfish at times. Had they been more proactive, interaction with beings from the integer dimensions would have happened much earlier, and the universe would have benefited greatly. No other species had figured out how to use the space calculators, and the only time they were ever put to use was when they were operating on their own and someone stumbled upon them by chance, such as in Bari's case. So, as you can tell, Bari had gotten very lucky here. He had stumbled upon their world, and everything was bound to change for both parties now.

Meanwhile, in a separate reality, Baritone Juicebox was still mulling over whether to continue life as a purported deity or to mysteriously disappear and stay with the cloud porpoises. In one billion, eight hundred million, seven thousand, six hundred, and forty-three different realities, a man named Fred was ordering a pepperoni pizza. However, in the one we're going to concern ourselves with at the moment, Baritone Juicebox and Arthur Crouton were being told the future by a group of four and a half cowz!.

This was the future they laid out for our protagonists, or more so it was the future that could exist should they go about all this business in the proper fashion and achieve the goals laid out in the quest the cowz! gave them. There was a place that could accomplish both of their goals. It was located within the Toast Mountains, specifically at the top of Mount Hockey, which was the highest peak in the aforementioned range. To get to this mountain, all that was necessary was to cross the Fatlantic Ocean and subsequently cross several thousand miles of terrain, until they arrived at the Asian portion of the Eurasian landmass, and then find the Toast Mountains. Upon climbing Mount Hockey, they would find the first basketball court ever built, which had been constructed by the ancient Comida tribe that had lived in the region roughly twelve thousand years prior to these events. Any basketball that had once been human that was shot through this hoop from the foul line would once more become human, and the being that shot the ball would be given a single wish. Now, this seemed an easy task for our heroes, but the part that transfigured the quest from a simple journey to an epic task was not the ocean, not the exorbitant amount of walking or climbing, not any of the challenges that they would encounter on the way, but that the shooter of the ball only had one shot to make it in, and if they failed, both the shooter and the ball would turn into a salad. Nevertheless, it seemed worthwhile to try, especially considering that the possibility existed that the cowz! were just making all this up. But, on the off chance that this was realistic, and their quest a feasible one, a training montage occurred, with fast paced scenes of Arthur shooting basketballs, running through obstacle courses, climbing mountains, lifting weights, and dancing alternating. Then they said good-bye to the cowz! and left the forest. Not, of course, before a couple of the wiser antlers threw their two cents in. Proverbial ones these were, of course, as antlers don't utilize currency. Of course, these antlers were amongst the oldest on Earth. They had seen many ages pass, enough to testify that dinosaurs had, in fact, once trod upon this planet, and were not placed there by any sort of deity in order to test our faith. Thus, their wisdom and knowledge, fortified by countless millennia and seventeen essential vitamins and minerals, was vast. Word had passed to them regarding the events which transpired from every corner of the globe, despite the globe being a corner-less sphere, and though they could not see the future, they could make reasonable estimates and confer rather solid advice. So, they warned Bari and Arthur about several of the obstacles that they were bound to encounter. I shouldn't tell you about those though, it'll ruin the surprise. But, many proverbs were passed down, and much advice dispensed, and even some laughs were had. All in all, this seemed like a nice start to this new adventure.

Whilst the antlers unloaded information upon Bari and Arthur, another Bari, separated from the one we were just talking about by the powers which confined him within his own reality for the time being, had just seen his very first four sided triangle. This, in his mind, took the proverbial cake, though he had seen many a sight worth acquiring cake for in his journey through space. Zany this was, as well as wacky. Clearly, this being possessed four sides, yet his instinct told him that the sum of their angles added up to one hundred and eighty degrees. To confirm this, he put his mind's compass to his mind's eye and did the necessary measurements, which indeed proved his instinctual guesses to be true. And since all it was doing currently was languidly drifting about space, he viewed it as being harmless enough to attempt communication with, plus it seemed to be emanating wisdom, for of that sort of knowledge he was overflowing. In addition, wasn't it worth the risk? If he was killed or put in a zoo, what difference would it make? He was an unknown quantity of distance from home and lost in space. If he shied away from interaction with everyone he saw, he'd never find his way back, or at least he'd never find anything decent to do out there. And so he approached the triangle, and thus began a dialogue, beginning with an introduction of himself and a small amount of back story clarifying why he was there and how that had come to pass. He didn't expect a response, because the odds were rather low that anyone living this far from Earth would understand a language such as English, but this triangle had travelled to many worlds, and understood the language quite well, and so began to bombard Bari with information about a plethora of topics, ranging from the treatment of jazz music in the Soviet Union to the proper way to prepare an omelet, and all the way to the history of the race of Galliloonians that reside in the innards of the planet Kjralaques. This was all fascinating information in its own right, but at the moment Baritone Juicebox was more interested in finding out information regarding his current whereabouts. Unfortunately, he had to wait what would equate to fourteen minutes on Earth for the triangle to run out of air in the angle he spoke from, forcing him to take a breath. Bari seized on the opportunity to acquire relevant information, and began asking the triangle some questions. He found out several things that you know, such as that they were in the i dimension, in the Grilled Cheese Nebula, and that he was among the race of four sided triangles. He also found out several things that you might not know, unless you're omniscient or have read this book before. For instance, he learned that in the beginning of time all the triangles had had three sides, but some began evolving a fourth side, while still maintaining the necessary amount of degrees to maintain triangle status. Some became full on quadrilaterals, and many triangles kept their three sided nature. The latter two groups, though, eventually found that they had a great deal of difficulty surviving, and they all eventually died out in the region. The only other creature that inhabited the nebula was the giant squid, which seemingly could thrive anywhere in space.

In the course of this book I've mentioned giant squid in space quite a bit. I feel that this requires some explanation, as I'm sure most of my readers have never left the atmosphere of their home planet and ventured forth into space. Thus, they only conceive of giant squid as aquatic creatures, but the truth is that they, like many of the ocean-borne creatures found on Earth, had their origins in space. And that is why so many of them have an inherent extraterrestrial look about them. Giant squid are, however, of particular importance in this story. As I've mentioned, they helped Bari on a couple occasions, and would continue to do so in the future. The famous biologist Face Tennis, whose work regarding cloud porpoises I quoted earlier in the book, once wrote a volume on giant squid which contains quite a bit of relevant information.

These are some useful passages:

"While nobody is quite certain of the origin of the giant squid, most scienhistorians are fairly certain that their pilgrimage through space and subsequent inhabiting of most known worlds began towards the center of the universe and emanated outward in every direction, much like matter right after the big bang."

"Whilst in space, the nature of the giant squid is generally passive, and they will thusly just float on until they are taken in by the gravitational pull of whatever celestial body they encounter, wherein they have shown a remarkable ability to adapt to whatever conditions they encounter. In some instances they have been known to maintain their airborne nature, while in others they became aquatic, and some became land creatures, and so forth."

In Bari's world, giant squid were water dwellers. He actually had mixed feelings regarding them. See, the two times I mentioned him finding them, they had helped him out, but those were only two thirds, sandwiched somewhere between sixty-six and sixty-seven per cent, of the times he had thus far encountered giant squid. This third time occurred far before he had received their aid on his jump from the moon, and even before they had assisted in him escaping from the undersea volcano. It went like this:

He was in the midst of adolescence. He was about fourteen years old. Chemical warfare was raging in his body, and every opposing chemical in his mind, good or bad, was engaged, and he was thus constantly ravaged. In various attempts to assuage these chemicals, he would often perambulate about his neighborhood, perhaps showing them that by a peaceful walk that it wouldn't be too unreasonable for them to make peace with each other. Oftentimes he would mount the vaunted milkshake hills and gaze out at those placid waters which comprised Lake Spatula. There he would reminisce, ruminate, ponder, and engage in several other actions which involved letting his mind meander over subjects both esoteric and exoteric, about his present condition, as well as the memories of the past and also planned memories that he hoped to remember at a later date, once he had made them happen. This time, as his eyes scoured the water, he saw a beady pair of black eyes gazing back into his, mesmerizing him and giving rise to temptations that would give the bad chemicals in his head a final victory. Should he give in? Flashbacks to wars he'd never partaken of began in his head. No! he should never surrender! Not to the Germans, the Carthaginians, the Gauls, the Visigoths, Vandals, British, Macedonians, or Juggalos! But all the while he could taste the squid's words as they found their way up the cliffs to him, and he pondered them, for they seemed wise to his foolish mind. He could easily enter a symbiotic relationship with the squid and end his adolescence. Simultaneously, this would bring a temporary solution to the pangs caused by hunger the squid was having in its stomach. However, the smaller, albeit extant, rational portion of his mind told him that this was not a fair trade. He could eventually get over his issues and move on. His was a permanent solution for a problem which was temporary, while the squid's problem was an ephemeral one, which would never permanently cease. He knew about fair trades, for he often followed the course of professional sports, and had thus developed a taste for what constituted a fair trade. Rationally, he would not feed himself to the squid. But still it seemed tempting, for the squid made it so. All he had to do was stand up, bend his knees, and then throw himself down into the squid's waiting mouth, and he did stand up, and he did bend his knees, and ever so suddenly the external world faded away. Bari was physically within his own mind, which had now taken the shape of a courtroom.

A woman with the body of a kimono dragon but a human face presided over the court. And before him stood several other familiar figures from Lake Spatula and the Milkshake Hills region. There was a tree, and a cow, and the ground below him, and even one of the cumulus clouds that had so recently graced the sky, now shaped like a meatball grinder. He, Baritone, occupied the defendant's position, so designated by a nametag upon a stand. The squid glared at him in an accusatory fashion that was so natural to those accusing, from the plaintiff's spot. In turn, the witnesses spoke.

"I saw him jump", exclaimed the tree.

"Oh, he jumped right into that squid's mouth. I saw him! I know it happened", chimed in that grinder shaped cloud.

"No doubt about it, he jumped", the cow added.

"Now, I know Bari. He's walked on me his whole life. He would never do something like that. he always seemed so nice," the ground said in his defense.

But the ground was soon drowned out by thousands of other voices, accusing him not only of jumping into the squid's mouth, but of other despicable crimes that were continuously accumulating on top of that one.

The judge gathered all of this information, and announced her verdict. Of course Bari was guilty. He had clearly jumped into the squid's mouth. There was no disputing this evidence that had been put forth. But what was a fitting punishment for such a crime? Should the crime fit the punishment? Or should you be given a punishment a couple sizes too large? Too small perhaps? No set handbook was there on this subject. Discretion was the word referring to the power given to the judge in this situation. And so the question of punishment was also raised to the audience. They had seen the crime perpetrated, they, if anyone, should have the best idea for a suitable punishment.

"Force him to jump into my mouth!" shouted the squid, who could already taste Bari's flesh in his mouth, so powerful was his anticipation.

"Ooh, I like that idea" said the cow.

"Me too, a very clever punishment you have devised this time, squid" exclaimed the cloud.

Even the ground was forced to agree that, as far as punishments go, this was a rather ingenious, very fitting punishment, though he refused to believe that Bari was guilty.

He was under orders now. He had no choice but to obey the law, for he had been told in school that the law would always catch up to him, and that this was the difference between the court of law and the basketball court:

"If I trick you on the basketball court, I might get a layup. If I trick you in the court of law, I'll lose the case."

And so he, of course, did not want to attempt to trick the law, especially knowing that it resided so close within his cranium. And he jumped, and fell, as the squid said, into its mouth. But the squid's mouth was a wormhole. It was a rip, somewhere, in the space-rhyme continuum, and when he fell through, he embarked on an adventure that we'll discuss more of later. For now, the problem at hand was that the Grilled Cheese Nebula was under attack.

And so, Bari tried to marshal together every bit of knowledge he had garnered from watching those civil war reenactments as a child, and protect his newfound friends from what was coming. I'm sure you've noticed by the drawings I've included thus far that I'm not very skilled as an artist, and while I might be able to convince you of what's going on with a basic image, there's no way I can create anything with any sort of detail. As much as I enjoy making bad drawings, for this case I'll stick with words. What was attacking the Grilled Cheese Nebula was a species which possessed the body of an earthworm, but with bat-like wings which pounded air downwards, and further spread their awful stench. The triangles knew quite a bit of the nature of war and fighting, but they had never practiced it, and were clearly at a disadvantage. Once again their knowledge failed as a result of not having used it practically. And so they were forced to flee. To the nearest space calculator the masses thronged, hurriedly calculating while an occasional brave one would wrestle one of the beasts, and all the while, Bari, too, had switched from attempting to utilize his knowledge of civil war reenactments to imitating what he had seen from professional wrestling. The problem here was that he had always watched more interviews with professional wrestlers than actual wrestling matches, and was thusly at a loss when it came to executing the moves. Fortunately, with minimal damage done, they escaped into another part of space. And this part was familiar. Bari had no idea that he would be so glad to once again view the moon of his home planet. He had presumed that he was lost to this area forever, and perhaps had put the thought in the back of his mind, in an old trunk where he stored things that perhaps he'd like to revisit in the distant future, once he had sufficiently forgotten about them and was able to romanticize the past. But before he could take in all the nostalgia properly, he found himself being verbally pelted by the triangles. Some equated his arrival with the arrival of the beasts. Some viewed it as his duty to eradicate them and save their beloved nebula, in a classic tale of a young and loveable, but flawed protagonist having to become a hero out of necessity. Naturally, if he had arrived, and those horrid creatures had arrived in such proximity, he had brought them with him, in some sort of terrible extraterrestrial caravan. There were, fortunately, wise ones amongst the triangles, ones who could see things are they were: a coincidence.

Elsewhere, Bari was gazing at the moon, where he might have seen himself if the conditions were met that he was in the proper reality and he had a sufficiently powerful telescope. Neither of those conditions was met though, and so he was simply gazing at the moon, his eyes perambulating over the sky, as Arthur Crouton slept peacefully beside him. As a basketball, he found sleeping even more difficult that he had as a human, something he could have scarcely imagined before. Luckily, basketballs don't require much in the way of rest, and so he was able to lie on the ground and ponder all night. Looking at his planet's lone satellite brought back so many memories. Fortunately he was in a better place than he was at the time. Things didn't seem so bad now. He was, in a way living the life he had always wanted, except for the part where he was a basketball. He could overlook that though, at least for the present. That was what they were journeying to remedy. But it was only the very beginning now. This was the first night after they had met the cowz! and been given their quest. Though, thinking about the subject, he wouldn't mind staying a basketball, so long as he could live a life like this, living in the woods, walking and being outside all day, and probably battling mystical creatures on a fairly frequent basis. All he missed now was his accordion. Indeed, his dream had once been to somehow manage to live off of riding his bike around and playing accordion in random places, earning an income to spend on pizza and chocolate milk, plus whatever travelling expenses he happened to incur on the way. Maybe there were accordions to be found in the wild. He had never known pizza or doughnuts to be plants until now. Who knows what the other possibilities consisted of. Maybe every food he loved was to be found in plant form. And maybe, just maybe, the same held true for musical instruments. At the very least, maybe he'd find someone willing to part with their accordion on the way, or he would find conveniently placed ones laying on the ground along their way. At this point, he wasn't willing to rule anything out. And still the moon gazed down at him, as he gazed upwards at it. And with these thoughts of a better life, and for the first time in a long time, content with his life and the direction it was taking, which was East, he fell into a restful sleep. Though it was late, and the sun would soon rise, he still was able to garner a decent rest, which he would need for all the future adventures and mysterious encounters he would encounter in the future.
Chapter VIII

Bari had told the cloud porpoise Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen that he would give her a response by chapter eight. He was ready. In the past two chapters, he had mulled muchos cosas over. He had made a decision. And thus is how he came to it:

Clearly, he was in the position of deity. Deified he had been, and so defied he would not be. For many, this godliness and utmost obedience was all they could wish from this life. He could have anything he wanted just by asking for it. Many might wish to possess just a fraction of this status, but Bari found it to be rather cumbersome. Sure, he had managed to perform all the miracles asked of him, and even a little extra so far, but that duty and the reverence in which it was held had become a burden. He didn't see it as a fair trade-off. Most of the islanders wished for fairly mundane things, things that he could usually pick up from the grocery store, and sometimes they wished for absolution, which was pretty easy to give as well. In return, he was, of course, treated as a god. Everything he wanted was brought to him in the timeliest of manners. But still, it was lacking.

He had once believed in a god. This was several years before our story, and at the time he was a young and impressionable teenager. He belonged to a church. At first, it was because he was a young child and had no choice, but in due time he was indoctrinated. He began to buy into all the nonsense, things that had he been thinking rationally, would have filled him with rage, or at least laughter. He performed his duties and gave up his earnings, as dutifully as any other because he believed that in the end there would be some sort of reward for all the toil, a reward much better than some sort of plaque or personalized pen. He had come to believe that it was better to let the joys of his current life bypass him, to make himself suffer and give up all that human nature told him was good, so that one day he might get a spot in the kingdom of god, probably as some sort of menial servant. He was satisfied with all this because it made him feel like he was a useful part of some holy scheme, like he was a vital organ, and no longer an appendix, and outside of this he had little to no connection to life. This was the perfect escape for one who was too shy, on foolish reasons, to go and take chances and to make something of himself and utilize his time alive. It was better to bow and to open his wallet and utter the proper words, for then he was looked upon with pride by his family and by the community around him.

And then, one day, he snapped out of it and came to his senses. This church had a story about the creation of the universe where the first two humans lived in a large garden. They lived there blissfully, though in ignorance of all wisdom and beauty outside of what their god had told them existed, until one day the GREAT EVIL ONE, in the guise of a snake, came to the woman. He explained some things to her. For example, that there was a tree that the god had told them not to eat the fruit of. This tree was called the tree of knowledge. Now, knowledge was not the fruit it bore, but supposedly the fruit contained within its skin the gift of knowledge of what was good and what was evil. The snake told the woman (I won't name any names here, to protect the innocent) that maybe it wouldn't be so bad to eat this fruit. You know, maybe this god, though a gifted gardener, was just hording his best fruits. And hey, this woman and her husband had been doing all the work tending the gardens and feeding the animals lately anyway. She deserved a snack! So, she strolled over to the tree, whistling nonchalantly, and picked a fruit. It might have been an apple. The details have gotten somewhat mixed up over the course of the years.

"This is such a delicious fruit, and clearly loaded with knowledge, in addition to essential vitamins and nutrients" she thought and rushed back to her husband with the knowledge of knowledge.

So, he took a bite, and thought the same thing. He also acquired knowledge. Now, because of this, their god expelled them from the garden, made them mortal, and made it so that the woman would have to bleed from her vagina once every month and the man would have to toil in the fields every day just to make ends meet.

Thinking about this take on the classic story, Bari realized one day that he was being taught to be an idiot, that they preached that to live in a state of grace, people had to be dumb. Was stupidity truly gracious? This did not make sense, and he refused to believe any further. And over the years they had waged countless wars, had set up inquisitions to seek out and destroy those they deemed heretical, and had wiped out most indigenous races all over the globe. If he continued down that path, would he be drafted into the next crusade, whatever form it might take? No, he was overjoyed at the revelation that it wasn't wrong to feel human passions, to enjoy being alive and not punish oneself for it, to prefer the taste of that first bite of pizza or the feeling of climbing up massive antlers to feel the cool summer breeze over the stiff heat in the church.

"Hey, this is pretty cool", was what he thought.

Indeed, the revelation was astounding, and as he remembered it, he knew what he had to do. Sure, he had been a benevolent god, but he could just as soon turn into that denying, wrathful, jealous deity he had worshipped in the past. Such was the course of action most rulers took. Sure, they start off nice and being "for the people", and then next thing you know they're leading mass genocides. This was not the path that appealed to him. He liked to think that he was impervious to the corruption of power, but hey, why take a chance? And regardless of benevolence, he was nonetheless a fraud. He had to tell the truth to those poor people before it was too late, before they lost more of their time worshipping the likes of him in vain. He was also pretty curious about those cloud porpoises. In addition, gods were forbidden to grow facial hair in those days, much like soldiers or other jobs where one is required to be "well kept", and he hated having to shave.

So, he gathered up the Islanders, and they circled about him, hoping that perhaps the day of judgment was en route, and that he was about to take them away to paradise. Instead, they had a severe letdown, as he merely told them his tale, from the point where he had leapt from the lunar surface with suicidal intentions. By the time he got to the part where the shark had torn him apart and he awoke to find himself levitating above them, they had collectively reached the decision that he was the one whom they called Ransyj, which in English means the devil, Satan, Lucifer, Mephistopheles, or Beelzebub. Obviously, he had tricked them into worship, and now was the time for him to repent. He was confessing because these were indeed times in which even the evil ones had consciences. Never mind that he had not asked to be worshipped. All this godliness had just been a prank played on him, and now he was reaping the punishment that was due to the true prankster. And though he repented, so did the heretics before they were killed in the inquisition, and so, as they, he needed to be destroyed. Oh, how that would please the true holy one, and maybe even prevent them from being stricken with plague, famine, or a losing baseball team. Thus a mighty angry mob was assembled, according to the strict rules which govern angry mobs, being that one third of the members must carry torches, one third pitchforks, and the last third arbitrary household objects to be used as weapons. Collectively they moved in on him, deriding him and seeming ever closer to ending his life with every step.

But, out in space, a moderately powerful magician took pity on this poor soul, though it was not usually his habit to do so. Normally he'd let false deities perish so that he would have less competition, though he was one himself. Nevertheless, he had gotten Bari into this conundrum by assembling his parts, and he appeared before the islanders to tell his tale. And when he finished they decided that he was the second part of the unholy trinity, and to round out the line-up they chose the burger he'd brought with him. These fools! They didn't recognize the one they had worshipped for thousands of years. But, he had a history of lying; he had done so for millennia, so why should they believe him when he finally came clean? They also had a history of believing foolish things, so why should they believe a logical thing? And all this just compounded into their attempt to lynch him and his burger. So, he conjured up the most powerful bit of magic that he could, and turned them all into pretzels, with the philosophy that if you can't be intelligent, you might as well be edible. And this magician felt much better having come clean, and knowing that the ones who had eaten him for all these years were now food themselves, and picked one up for him and one for Bari, and conjured some nacho cheese, and they sat down to talk.

Between bites, the magician told Bari that since he had brought him back to life, he also had within him the power to bring him back to death, or if he so chose, he could just continue living, with a decent pension and insurance plan. To Bari, at this point, the choice was clear. While he had once wanted death, now the only option was to live, and he had a pension, which was pretty rare at his age, for he had been a deity. He wasn't sure what he'd be making, but maybe there was the option he wouldn't have to go back to that job if he once again returned home. He was so exuberant that he signed all the paperwork put before him, not realizing that he shouldn't just be giving out his social security number to random strangers. Oh well. Hopefully this magician was to be trusted. He did seem to have turned over the proverbial new leaf. And come through he did. In fact, Bari began receiving checks regularly, though it turned out the pension was not in the form of currency, but in a free lifetime subscription to the periodical of his choice, and a check which was indeed just a voucher for one free burger every week and optional fries for only fifty cents from Larry's Burger Elephant. In the wake of the departure of the magician, his friend Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen, who had been waiting the rest of the chapter for that altercation to end, returned to whisk him off to the clouds. He was given a sweater vest and up they went!

Over the years it had come to pass that the cloud porpoises resided in what is colloquially known as a utopia. The problem with places like that is that people just don't have much interest in hearing about them, so long as they exist. They want to hear about places where the "action" is, where murder and horrid actions are common. To them, most utopias exist mostly as things to be nostalgic about when they're long gone. Nobody wants to live in one, just to wish that they lived in one. They don't find a peaceful existence to be a very interesting thing, but once they themselves are in trouble they like to think back fondly of what used to be. Bari, though, was quite find of this utopia from the moment that he arrived. They welcomed him without even the mildest apprehension, and he had not experienced such a welcome in the entire course of his lifetime. He had generally met hostility wherever he went. These were generally tough days for Juiceboxes. Having adjusted to their way of life, he found that what he appreciated most was the many arts that the cloud porpoises excelled in, which included, but are not limited to: carpentry (the construction of furniture and buildings and other objects, often with wood), carpetry (the making of carpets), carpitry (the making of carp, a fish of the order cypriniformes and family cyprinidae), and carpoetry (poetry regarding all of the above subjects). He knew he could be quite satisfied living amongst these cloud-abiding cetaceans. However, much like with the triangles of the chapters of yore, evenfall was dawning on the golden age of the cloud porpoises, and Baritone Juicebox was to at least enjoy living in this crepuscule. The more he assimilated into the culture of the cloud porpoises, the more he became like them, and eventually he had, like Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen, the ability to switch, at will, between the body of a human and that of a cloud porpoise. One of the elders of the society, who had taken a fondness to Bari, even knitted him his own sweater, replete with a dinosaur themed pattern.

During those years he rejoiced in living the life of a cloud porpoise, not at all missing the now non-existent human society. In this time he would often swim through the clouds with his closest friend amongst the porpoises, who had also once ben human and had entered her shower in search of Don Henley. Many things they found they had in common, not only with their similar stories of transformation, but also in their natures. During the span of time which made up their swimming adventures, they would often swap tales, for they found each other's stories fascinating, and then they would swap tails, to see how it affected their swimming. There was much free time and leisure to be had in this society, for there was no need for a job, such as the humans valued so much. They built their homes out of the clouds, which were always renewing, and all the food that they required they were able to grow out of the fertile soil that the clouds provided them with. Therefore, an extra forty hours per week was freed up to devote to the activities of their own choosing. That's not to say that the cloud porpoises are lazy creatures. The opposite is in fact true. They are very hard working, but only work hard at that which is necessary, and don't seek to abuse the labour of the other porpoises. And those forty hours a week that were now free? Well, over the course of the thousands of years which the porpoises lived, they were enabled to think a whole lot more, their minds not being clouded by the thought of what useless paperwork they needed to fill out, but only clouded by physical clouds, which provided a refreshing mist. With all this thinking, they attained roughly dodeca-sentience.

Now, being so wise, they had never had need for weapons or war. They lived from away from the knowledge of any potential predators or conquerors, and they had no fights amongst each other. Every once in a while there would be a quarrel, as not every cloud porpoise held the same opinions on every topic, but the minor ones were oft-resolved by logical discussion, and the major ones were taken to a three part competition consisting of a chess match, a wrestling match, and a poetry reading, with whoever one two of the three being declared the winner of the argument. Most of the time, though, arguments were not occurring, and the porpoises were pooling their collective resources and abilities together to advance themselves in whatever areas suited their interests best. Some discovered wonderful new medicines that resided in the flora which grew from the clouds, and the cloud porpoises lived lives much past the range of the human life, and were healthy for the vast majority of that time. Indeed, the oldest recorded cloud porpoise was named Olundark, and he was a famous carpoet who finally kicked the bucket at nine thousand, four hundred, and thirty seven years of age. Others devoted themselves to the arts, and produced the finest literature, music, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and et cetera that had ever been seen or heard upon the Earth. With this unbounded freedom of choice, many amongst them became renowned in the culinary arts, in science, in physical prowess, and a few select ones excelled in cloud breeding, which was held to be an extremely important facet of survival. See, as we all know, clouds are evanescent. Their existence is fleeting, and their life as fixtures in the sky never lasts too long, and so the most highly skilled cloud porpoises often took on the task of seeding unclouded areas of the sky to grow clouds suitable for porpoise life. Now, as with every good thing there are always a few negatives, and not every cloud porpoise lived to the best of its abilities, but those that didn't were few and generally harmless. They were usually just lazy, and drifted amongst the clouds, learning nothing, and practicing nothing, and the ones that cared little enough would often just fade into the clouds, becoming as thoughtless as they. It was rare that any cloud porpoise had malevolent intentions.

This was one main difference between humans and cloud porpoises: the porpoises could not be so easily swayed to any cause, and so on the occasions when one had evil intentions, they would often just become frustrated while trying to convince the others to join them in order to rule the world and poison the supply of something or engage in some sort of mass murder. They would usually just give up and become clouds or descend to the human world and join those who they had more in common with.

As was mentioned before, human society had somewhat recently been destroyed by World War 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971. Between the nuclear bombs of one side and the poison sandwich bombs of the other, about 79.3 per cent of humans on the planet had been killed, all over a foolish arm wrestling match. The remnants had been forced to take to the sea and wander, hoping to find land that was both hospitable to them and not poisoned.

It was long before they noticed the crepuscular rays. These were also known as Jacob's ladder. A human book called the bible says that this is because a fellow named Jacob viewed them as ladders to heaven, but this is what actually happened: a scientist named Oliver Calipherneus Jacob discovered that these rays of light coming down from the sun through the clouds could be climbed, and that the clouds were habitable until they began to dissolve, upon which they would normally just give you a rather kindly eviction notice.

And so it was that a rather cruel and wicked man, who had once been a cloud porpoise knew how to access their realm, who was named Gjorthondolad, for that meant "evil enemy of the porpoises", descried the crepuscular rays, and spoke of the wonders to be found in the sky, and the people,being wretched and weary, were prone to believe the words of wicked men because they could ease their suffering. And so it was that a few men, soon to be followed by the remnants of civilization, ascended Doctor Oliver Calipherneus Jacob's ladder, and viewed for themselves the realm of the cloud porpoises.
Chapter IX

They woke at the break of the day, having asked the sun to send a wakeup call, on the edge of the edge of the enchanted forest, the one opposite to the side they had entered in, con cinco cabesas glaring at their own. The five heads staring at them seemed human, but they were attached to the body of a timberwolf, though it was one that was clearly a biped. By this point Arthur and Bari had become used to random amalgamations of human and fauna, of fauna and flora, and various other incarnations involving disparate beings being fused together. Indeed, as we discussed, they already met the cowz! and the talking antlers, and then the way out of the forest had been full of them. Far too much activity for one day of walking. They had survived, as we can see, but on the way they encountered one creature that had the head of a rabbit on a tree, which only had a brief conversation with them before allowing them to continue on. There was another that was just the opposite, who had the head of a tree on a rabbit's body, and was a nuisance in that it was blocking there path, sleeping. Once around that they had peace for a while, but then came their two biggest challenges of the day, the ones which truly exhausted them but let them know that they were indeed embarking on an adventure.

First was the mantiwhore. Care to know what that is? A delightful creature it is, and closely related to the manticores of ancient Persia. They had the body of a lion and the head of a human, like the manticore, but with an additional promiscuous nature that came from having one parent being a manticore and the other being a slag. To encounter one often meant disaster, for to lose its riddle competition was to be forced into coitus, and subsequently devoured. To win, they needed to answer two out of the three riddles presented to them in a correct, yet timely fashion.

This was the first:

I am the beginning of the end, and the end of time and space. I am essential to creation, and I surround every place. What am I?

At this, there was much scratching of heads. Not too well versed in riddles were our protagonists, and this they failed to answer.

"The letter E!", shrieked the mantiwhore. "Clearly, the letter e begins the word end, and ends the words time and space, as well as being a cornerstone of the word creation, and begins and ends the phrase every place." At this the mantiwhore advanced closer, before issuing its second riddle.

What always runs but never walks, often murmurs, never talks, has a bed but never sleeps, has a mouth but never eats?

"hmm", said Arthur, making the thinking onomatopoeia so common to his people.

"I know!", exclaimed Arthur. It's a river!

"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhh!" screamed the mantiwhore. And revoked the advance it had made after they missed the first riddle, thus putting our heroes back where they were in the beginning. Now it all came down to this last riddle. What question would they put before them? Would it be an easier one? How vast was her knowledge? Oh, how they hoped she knew nothing so devilishly tricky that they could not discern the answer. Or, consequently, that she would not use Bilbo's old riddle, for they had no idea at all what was in her pocket, and at this point, had no intention or desire to ever find out.

What's black and white and red all over?

So, turns out she asked in order of decreasing difficulty, and dissipated upon Arthur and Bari in unison shouting "a newspaper". As she screamed and her atoms scattered with the wind, the path became once more open for our protagonists to tread, relieved that she had asked such a simplistic, widely known riddle, probably thinking nobody else had heard it. In fact, those were the only three riddles she knew, having come across them as an infant, before she had decided to become what she once was. And so the path was clear, and the walk pleasant, and the exit to the forest visible, just as the sun was setting.

And then came the rhymaera, with the body of a lion and a tail which ended in snake's head, and atop this was the head of a goat, which uttered forth ingenious rhymes, which had not yet been topped by any that had met it, and fearful were our protagonists when it stopped them from exiting the forest. Still full of the exhilaration that had come with the defeat of the mantiwhore, they went into the slam poetry competition with confidence, but found that their rhymes were no match for the one who had the word rhyme in its name. There was a loophole though!

"Oh, sir rhymaera", said Arthur, as the rhymaera was moving to kill them. "Perhaps our rhymes were not so good as yours in your mind, but isn't rhyming an art, and thusly subjective, free from the bounds of good and bad, with quality only being contained within the bastions of that institution known as opinion."

The rhymaera, though a proud artist, conceded this truth, for he was also rational, or as rational as mythological beasts come, and he receded back into the forest and allowed them to pass. Exhausted, they laid down immediately, though only Arthur was able to sleep. Bari spent the night ruminating on what had happened that day, and in the previous twenty-two years, and what was to come, hopefully. And when they awoke, there was the timberwolf with the five human heads, who wished to exact a toll from them for usage of the road they claimed to own.

This was preposterous. The path through the forest was clearly public property, and thus had already been paid for with their tax money. These highwaymen had no legal right to charge them for usage of the road, but were so annoying that they were tempted to give in and pay. Then Arthur, spotting a copse of basketball hoops growing a few, I say a few, because I don't know the exact distance, but I estimate it to be about four hundred feet away. Seeing these, and remembering his recent training montage, Arthur decided he could kill two of the proverbial birds with one proverbial stone, and not feel a shred of guilt in his conscience because it was all proverbial. If he challenged them to a basketball game, where if he won, he got by toll-free, but would pay if he lost, win or lose he would still be able to work on his basketball skills. And if in addition, he didn't have to pay this falsely excised toll, that was all the better. The wolf, being a rather prideful animal, couldn't deny any sort of challenge, though he had not touched a basketball in years. The one condition agreed on before the game was that Bari couldn't be the game ball, as he would most likely have a bias, and so they picked a ball growing from a nearby tree.

And so the game started. They were playing to eleven, with each basket counting for one point, or two, if the shot was taken from behind a line that naturally occurred on the ground. Honestly, it wasn't really much worth talking about. Arthur won quite easily, despite his usual lack of basketball prowess. It just so happened that out of every sentient being on the planet, this wolf was the least sports. In addition, sports is now an adjective. I hope so anyway. Seeing how bad the wolf was, Arthur wisely didn't let this go to his head, and refused to count this as a major victory, and regarding it as merely a chance to practice a bit.

More eventful than the game itself was the wolf's dishonourable actions after the game. According to the rules of the sport, Arthur had clearly won, by a margin of eleven to nothing. In doing so he had clearly held his part of the proverbial bargain. The wolf's actions were just to the contrary. Despite Arthur's outright victory, he still insisted that they pay the toll, and no matter what competitions were won, a toll needed to be paid for passage on this road. Though a pacifist, Arthur was very tempted to slay this wolf, though in the end he restrained himself, and the restraint paid off, for an escape route was offered that would not play on his conscience. So, relief came in the form of a rabbit, which was bounding down the path out of the forest that Arthur and Bari were treading. This distracted the wolf, albeit momentarily, giving them a chance to escape, and so as the wolf attempted to excise his toll on this newcomer, he forgot our protagonists and left them free to run.

And run they did! Far away from the tax-wolf-man, they bounded o'er stone paths and fields of salad, until they collapsed from exhaustion and took their lunch from a salad bush, which unfortunately reminded Arthur of what would happen to him if he couldn't make that free throw.

What was most worrying to them right now was knowing that they had an ocean to cross. And not just any ocean. No, this was the Fatlantic. It was FAT. Getting to that ocean wasn't so much a problem. Mostly they just woke up with the sun and walked all day, going to bed shortly after the sun set and a nice meal of whatever they could forage or occasionally pick up from a grocery store, often living off of the free samples available in certain stores. Their biggest travail came when they reached the large stretch of land known as the Paper Plains. I'm sure you've guessed the nature of this place. Indeed, they must tread carefully here, for the slightest misstep could send them plummeting down through the paper until they hit solid ground, and how far down that was nobody knew. Below them could have just been empty space, leading down to the center of the Earth. Should they survive that fall, it'd surely be quite difficult to once more ascend, especially with the lack of stairs, escalators, elevators, or any sort of climbing implements. So every step was required to be delicate, and this meant extremely slow going. And how would they sleep? What if they lay down in a spot where the paper was thinner? These were the problems giving rise to conflagration in their minds and discussions on the very first day traversing the plains.

An idea struck Bari as the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon. In this idea he found a clue as to the solution of this problem, and also one that could potentially get them to where they needed to at a much higher speed. It involved a play on words, invoking thoughts that perhaps these plains existed only to slow down the dullards who crossed it, but to enable those with keen minds to accelerate their travels.

"Arthur, remember what the sign at the beginning of this stretch told us it was called?"

"Yes, the Paper Plains, I believe."

"Correct. Do you know of any other paper plains."

"What, like plain paper, paper that hasn't been written...OH!"

"Yes"

"I see what you're talking about. Arts and Crafts!"

To this work they set about like madmen, becoming a whirlwind of production, fearful lest the paper below them give way before they finished this project. And what would you know, before long, they had before them an airplane, fashioned from paper, like the ones they would construct in elementary school and throw around behind the teacher's back, only of a much greater magnitude, for this had to carry one human being and one basketball.

"This is wonderful, but how do we get it off the ground?" asked Arthur.

"I'm not really sure. We always threw paper planes, but if one of us was even strong enough to throw this contraption, the other would inevitably be left behind, and that would negate the whole purpose of our quest."

"Is there anyone around who could throw us?"

"I see no one closer than the horizon in any direction."

"Well, I suppose we could ask the one thing we can't see" said Arthur.

"Well, we can't see anyone. Are you proposing that we ask anyone? Or do you suggest asking Anyone? For he is a fickle character, I have heard, and quite unreliable."

"No" said Arthur. "Let's ask the wind!"

And with the utmost efficiency a mast was amassed, replete with a paper sail attached to it, and attached to the top of this plane, and then they made their plea to the wind, who responded approvingly to their ingenuity, and provided a favourable gust. Off they flew! Supported only by paper, and guided by the wind, they rose up to cruising altitude, at which they cruised. Below, the plains were long gone, replaced by deserts and much more miniscule desserts, and eventually forest, and finally, coastline.

Our protagonists were roughly halfway across the Fatlantic when disaster struck. The wind that had been supported them all this way reached its limit. It held no sway in this region, and could propel them no further. An engine they had not, and without the wind, they slowly cruised down, and crash landed in the water. Having no idea as to how much further they had left, but knowing that no human had ever swam this large a portion of the Fatlantic, they began to despair. Wouldn't you? This ocean was, unarguably, FAT. For the longest time it had been known simply as the Atlantic. And then it became a glutton. Eating the creatures that resided within its confines, eating the boats that dared to sail upon its surface, and even engorging itself on the winds and clouds which came so low as to be within reach of its waves. Soon enough it was clear that this was no longer the beloved Atlantic everyone had known. This was indeed the Fatlantic. And right in the middle of the fat our protagonists were stranded, swimming ever eastward, but having no real hope of hitting land. At the very least, they hoped to run across a friendly dolphin or some sort of gregarious seafaring creature, and with that hitch a ride. But for now, Bari's thoughts turned to the sky above him, for the moon shined brightly on this night, and he began to entertain funny thoughts regarding it. What if, he thought, when he had tried to kill himself, because he had been so conflicted in that crucial moment, he had split into several metaphorical pieces, and part of him had flown back out into space? And what if he had met some fantastic creatures, ones whose existence was improbable to the point of being considered impossible? But what if their home was attacked, and they were driven forth, and somehow ended up in the moon, though still stuck in another dimension? And so what if part of him was currently residing on the moon? These were the sorts of thoughts, which he regarded as outlandish, but nonetheless entertained.

At the same time, the other Bari, the one in space, was once more looking at the Earth from the moon, remembering that incident at Lake Spatula in which he had leapt off a cliff and into the giant squid's mouth, but the mouth had been a wormhole. For here the space-rhyme continuum was warped, and rhymed in a very abstract manner, but possessed little reason, and so he landed not on the tongue of the squid, but on the ground, in the distant past.

However, before I recount that adventure, I must first get a new pen. This is much better. That last pen was running out of ink. Now, I found myself in quite the conundrum the other night. I was watching a rather corny horror television program called Tales from the Crypt, and one of the episodes was called Four Sided Triangle. Upon further research, I discovered that a science-fiction movie was released in 1953 with that very same title. So now I'm stuck thinking about how I should deal with these matters. My first option would be to carry on as if I was oblivious to the fact that what I thought was an original idea is not actually so. The second option would be to alter the triangles into other shapes with mismatched quantities of sides and degree of angles. The third choice would be to transform these creatures into something completely different. Being that I have to leave for work in a couple minutes, I will debate this matter at that place, and hopefully return in about twelve hours with an answer.

Over the course of the past week, I suffered a terrible bout of writer's block, but in an effort to end it I'm forcing myself to write, and madly hoping that what comes out is of some worth. I've also been pretty indecisive, and unable to come to a conclusion as to what to do regarding my conundrum regarding the Four Sided Triangles. So, in a desperate attempt to kick-start my creativity and simultaneously buy time for this decision, for it is a decision that will change the course of history for an entire race, I will tell you the oft-vaunted and now legendary tale of what transpired when Baritone Juicebox jumped from the cliff down towards Lake Spatula:

It began like this:

W

En un arbol, un gato lee un libro.

Baritone bent his knees and lowered his torso in the process, and pushed upwards, causing his body to fly upwards, and then downwards as soon as gravity caught sight of what he was doing.

"Hey you!" yelled gravity. "What are you trying to get away with. Is it flying? Perhaps space travel?"

These accusations really got to Bari. His intentions were innocent for once. He was acting in accordance with the law laid down by the court in his mind, as well as the laws of physics, which all too often I cause him to defy.

Out of spite, gravity grabbed him with all his might, and hurled him downwards.

Milenkoooooo!

The squid's jaws enclosed about him, and as he looked around, he found that his surroundings were not mouth-like at all, but much more akin to a forest. In the future, he would be very fortunate, and only enter benevolent, or at the very least, indifferent, enchanted forests. But now, he was at the very furthest end of that spectrum, where the trees were ill-tempered, and he found them leering at him as soon as he came to his senses, and neither him nor his senses were very pleased in this moment. Once the time for leering had passed, and that was no longer a valid activity, they began to throw their fruits and seeds and other miscellaneous items that they had found within the confines of their branches at him.

What was he to do?

What would you do?

No dew was there to be found!

Were this a choose your own ending novel, I might ask your advice, but at the moment that is a project I have not yet undertaken, and so the burden of this decision lies with me.

He fled. He was no match for the trees, and even if he was, he had no idea or conception of where it was that he was. In fact, he knew not any form of when, where, why, or how he was. He only knew what he was, and that was a juicebox, and that was still up for debate, and also useless to him at the moment.

But this wasn't:

The Earth, before the idea of a heliocentric solar system was accepted, was flat. Thusly, to make it round, it was rolled up, and because of this, the inside was empty. Well, mostly empty. Had it been completely hollow, he might have just simply fallen to the bottom, most likely killing himself in the process. He did that enough though. Another suicide attempt was unnecessary, even if it was an unintentional one, so fortunately, over the course of the last few hundreds of years, refuse from the outer world, such as rocks, plants, and a whole myriad of objects consisting of solid matter, had fallen through the surface and filled it in so that it had become habitable.

It was important for Bari to know this, because as he ran he saw a cave. He ducked down into the entrance and crawled around on his knees for a short distance, about ten feet, and around this time the cave opened up a bit. Conveniently, there was also a staircase right in front of him, which he took, for he was clearly meant to take it, but not take it with him. Just to walk down it. The aforementioned walk was a pretty long one. It took about seven minutes, which isn't really a long time for one to be walking, unless they're inherently lazy, but one covers quite a bit of distance whilst walking for seven minutes vertically.

Oftentimes, it is said that at the moment of death one's life flashes before their eyes, and they witness all that has passed in the span of their life in sequential order. Now, Bari was not about to die, nor was his life flashing before his eyes, but there before him, upon a vast plain, bespotted by a meafurrlous gallimaufry of flora, was his life. It did not flash at all, but all the events which had and would in the future make up the events of his life were coexisting like long lost brothers that are pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle. There it was that he saw himself being born, and off to the right a bit was his first encounter with a sandwich. And just beyond it, he saw himself seeing a string orchestra for the first time, and himself fighting it off as the orchestra tried to attach itself to him. And within a massive cornucopia he saw a cornucopia (as an adjective) of other events, including that the gallivanting of his which constitutes the vast bulk of this book. Indeed, it was inside that cornucopia that he saw himself tie himself to a rocket and launch off into space. Many of these events he recognized as memories, but many of the ones he didn't recognize he hoped were merely illusions, for he wished that he was not capable of much of the madness, the unyardulent foolishness which he saw unfolding before him. He turned away for a minute to watch himself getting a hit in a little league baseball game, and then getting hit in a little league baseball game, and then his first day of kindergarten. Upon turning his attention back to the cornucopia, he noticed that the event with the rocket was unfolding again. Oh, how he loathed to see that.

"I'd never do that" he thought. That thought was one that passed before his mind quite often while he was down here. The following thought passed through his mind just once before he received an answer:

"Whatever could this place be", he said aloud, in a tone which indicated that he clearly expected to be answered, despite not seeing anyone that wasn't too busy acting out their own small parts in the farce which was his life around at all.

The expected answer did come though, in the form of a moustache that floated down behind him, at about face level. Right, in fact, at the level where a moustache would be if he was sporting one.

"Yourself", said the moustache.

"Excuse me?" was Bari's reply, as he turned around to face the moustache, and having no anticipation of the corny, quasi-psychedelic moment that was about to occur.

"You are within your consciousness, which remembers all that has passed and all that might yet pass"

"So then, much of this foolishness that I see here is only potential?"

"Well, all the foolishness that hasn't happened yet might be averted still. Look at all these events. See how many of the characters enacting them have question marks somewhere upon their countenances? Well, that denotes that whether or not that event will happen is still up in the air. And if you look up in the air, you can see a scale leaning either towards a Y or an N, which shows the current probability of a future event, depending on current circumstances."

Looking around, and now above him, Bari could tell that all of this was true. He was slightly comforted, but not completely so, being possessed of the nagging feeling that most of what he saw would end up happening. And the moustache carried on:

"You see, you see only a miniscule part of these vast lands, and it would take you an eternity to wander through them all and see all that might be, and you don't quite have an eternity. I could tell you how long you do have, but I don't want to ruin the surprise."

That last sentence was uttered much to Bari's chagrin, and incited in him a bit of paranoia, which the moustache noticed.

"Oh, disregard that last part. I was just kidding. I have no idea what's going to happen to you. I'm just a tour guide here. But, as I was saying, depending on a variety of variables, and exponents, and upon nature, upon certain fixed constants, and upon the pie filled with bees that is known as karma, and many others to boot, everything with a question mark here is bound to change in some way. You, however, are about to be late for dinner, and your parents are making Finnish pancakes."

"Alas, I'd forgotten! At least this adventure was to some avail, for these vignettes of the past inspired in me the bittersweet nostalgia that is so pleasant to think about and romanticize and ensure that it is perfect when compared to the doldrums of the present, so long as I block out the negative components of that past. And as for the future! Well, what entertainment that is! What a panthilateur of moscacatoon! I have received for the price of a mad chase through an evil fortress more entertainment than is contained within all the films I will ever see, disregarding those which star John Cusack, for those are as dear to my heart as my own memories. Well, how then, kind moustache, shall I return home?"

"I shall guide you" replied the moustache, who, had Bari paid more attention to the scenes which were all around him, would have recognized as the very moustache he would wear in about eight years, "for one day I shall rest my laurels upon your face, and all who gaze upon your visage will see us as one."

With that, the moustache led him to a hot air balloon, and as the basket rose, the scenery about him slowly transmutated into the world he knew, until at last the balloon turned upside down, and the dirigible dumped him through the roof of his house, with no damage to said roof, and onto the floor of his bedroom.

"What the hell was that?" screamed his father from downstairs!

Thinking quickly, for he did not want to tell his father the truth of what had just happened, for fear that his father would think him on drugs and subsequently disown him or send him to rehab, and he uttered the first fabrication of the story that came to his mind.

"I was just, uh, you see, um, just trying to learn how to juggle, when the delicious aroma of your Finnish pancakes broke my concentration, and one of the bowling pins I was juggling fell to the floor"

Now, his father was certainly flattered by the compliment to his cooking, but with the aforementioned lie being uttered, he lost all memory of what had happened since he had leapt from the cliff, and was left only with a certain disdain for giant squid.
Chapter X

And this is what befell the Four Sided Triangles:

As they gathered in camps upon the moon in the manner of refugees, for refugees they were from their ancient home in the Grilled Cheese Nebula, with our protagonist, Baritone Juicebox, among them, a letter descended from the sky, and fell lightly at the center of one group of triangles. Immediately they began to trace their eyes over this communication, which was from me. It was exceedingly verbose, so I'll paraphrase.

I mentioned the copyright infringement that I was in danger of, if I did not change my ignorant ways. I told them that though I had a great respect for their proud breech of geometrical rules, they had only existed truly for a couple months, though within the context of this story they had indeed existed since the days before the adolescence of the universe. I let them know that my claims that they had always existed might hold up in court, but that it was rather unlikely, mostly because I couldn't afford as good a lawyer as anyone who might sue me. On the positive side, nobody, or likely, not enough people will read this tale, and even more likely nobody of enough importance to persecute me. Also, the chance was alive that the term four sided triangle was not actually copyrighted, since I had seen it as both the title of a movie and as an episode of a television show. It also might be a subject that mathematicians debate, maybe even on a moderately frequent basis. So, being that it was their fate, I left the decision up to them, as over the course of the last week I realized that this predicament was actually most likely nothing to worry about. The truth was that I had just come to be unsure as to where I was going to take their story, and needed some time to bide that over. And with that, I invited them to meet me up for pizza sometime and discuss what was to be done. In the meantime, it's shortly after four in the morning, and I've been writing for a bit over an hour after my release from work, and I'd like to take a shower. Hopefully this break in writing isn't as long as the last one, which took a week because I was trying to decide what to do with the triangles and then came back and told a completely different story. I can't stand creative droughts. They're just as unhealthy as long periods of time without rain.

I was right! Twenty minutes in the shower and I'm back from the repose that was my hygienic ritual. Now this is what happened when I met with the triangles to discuss our options:

I met them on the planet, Nevo Dum, from which pizza had originated right after the first intelligent beings in the universe became conscious that they were intelligent, and thus hungry. It was here that the greatest pizza in the universe could be found, for all pizza descended from it, and was, at least in a minor way, a diluted form of the ancient glory which gave the original recipe its majesty. There, within a pizzeria within the bowels of an active volcano, which was itself an oven, we held our conference.

Our discourse included all the concerns I had thought of and voiced previously, and the take that many of the triangles had on those issues. Most of them were not worried about copyright infringement, for they did not believe that the phrase which constituted their name belonged to any one being, and in addition I might claim that I was being original because I added "from the Grilled Cheese Nebula" to the title of Four Sided Triangle. Such silly things often held up quite well before the scrutiny of the courtroom, I was told. However, they did express concern for my creative integrity, and my desire to hopefully create original things. They did mention though that I could still just claim ignorance and get away without having to pay any sort of fine. The problem there would be if the prosecutors were of the arrogant sort and claimed that everyone must have known about their creations. Beyond all this, beyond the judicial system and whatever "integrity" we might discuss, they had a greater concern. They were aware that their species was fading away from the memory of the universe, and even from their own memory. They had become vast stores of knowledge, but without purpose, for they never put it to practical use or helped to spread it, even within their race. Having the knowledge was nice, but why was it they had never used it? Was it because they just never learned to communicate well, and preferred to be by themselves? But lately they had come to realize that this was a crime. And perhaps it was worse of a crime to have knowledge and make it useless than to go through life ignorant, never desiring that knowledge in the first place. And while they had knowledge, they were certainly lacking in wisdom, for wisdom would have encouraged the practical use and spread of the aforementioned knowledge. Also lacking was common sense. They had the rarest of knowledges but not even the most common of senses. What fools they had been! And now they rued the course that the history of their species had taken. Once where they had been venerated teachers, and had brought peace and all of the pieces which constituted it, with them wherever they went across the universe, now their names were not even known. And while this was a better course, in their eyes, than having their names known and feared, if they had just stuck with their nature, nothing but good would have been seen of them in the eyes of others. But for some reason they had just fallen into the habit of indifference, and now sought to change that. Now it so happened that the momentary fear of copyright issues and lacks of originality coincided with their desire for a fresh start. Yes, the course they had taken had run too far. To turn back and try to rectify that could be done, but why not start again and do what they could to prevent that folly from ever happening again. I offered them, initially for different reasons, just what they had desired, and this opportunity was too good to not go for. Fools they would not be this time. Where before they might not have jumped at the opportunity, for fear of taking a real risk, this time they grabbed life by the proverbial horns, but very carefully, so they did not harm life, and said:

"Life, we see your opportunity and raise you a new history!"

And so a new history was begun.

And in the end, when the last pizza we had ordered was reduced to a pile of crumbs upon its pedestal of a tray, we signed a contract that stated that the triangles were to take up any semblance that they desired, and that they could maintain their history, but instead of wallowing in it and pining for past glories, they would be required to use that history to enlighten themselves, and to prevent the follies of their previous existence from ever happening again. While we discussed what was to become of the triangles, I'll relate to you another part of this tale, and come back in just a little while with our decision.

No land was yet to be seen, and had they swam on for a thousand more miles there still would be none. Hopeless this cause seemed, but at the very least, Bari noticed that, even as a basketball, he was picking up the whole swimming thing pretty well. This was now two Bari's that had learned. Good job Baritone! But by now they were so exhausted, and couldn't even find in themselves the strength to swim even half the length of a kiddie pool. They needed to sleep, but lacked, being a human and a basketball, respectively, the ability to rest in the manner that a shark would.

Now, tell me how unlucky this part is: a couple hundred miles back, they had floated by the island which another Bari had been god of in another existence. Too bad they were too focused on going forward (or in this case, eastward, that they forgot how important it was to take in their surroundings). Respite could have been found there, so long as they weren't found and subsequently deified, or demonized, or turned into some form of holy or unholy being which they indeed were not. Who knows how they would have treated an anthropomorphic basketball. Most likely not with reverence, I'd imagine. Arthur would have stood a decent shot though, especially since it seemed like they had a funny habit of deifying goofy looking young men. Certainly this mattered not a single bit though, as anything that could have happened there disappeared from that cavern where all that had happened and all that might have happened coexisted. Don't worry, they say that matter cannot be destroyed, but it merely changes forms, and so even more possibilities came out of their continued swimming, which turned out to be one of the greatest oceanic adventures undertaken by human, basketball, or any combination of the aforementioned.

Remember a certain undersea volcano inhabited by a grumpy hermit crab? Bari's friend, who was a most gregarious sea turtle, had once inhabited it, but had been evicted on false pretenses because the landlord was a friend of that hermit crab, who had just been evicted from his place on grounds that were very much grounds for divorce. Well, over the years this volcano had been pushed up by Plate Tectonics, the friendly godfather of that peninsula which once attached itself to the island where Bari had been god. Quite rapidly this volcano had been pushed upwards, and it was still somewhat shocked from the quickness of the motion, but had mostly gotten over it. So, by this point, the tip of the volcano was merely twenty feet below the surface of the ocean, and better yet, they saw it was sealed. This meant several things:

1: There was probably no water in the volcano

2: Whoever lived inside could possibly be a surface dweller who was currently residing underwater

3: If number two is correct, there is breathable air and respite available within that volcano.

"Well, why don't we dive down and knock", suggested Bari.

"At this point, that's definitely worth a shot. Anything is, really. I can't swim another micrometer."

And so Bari and Arthur each conjured their inner anvil, and down they sank, until they sat upon the summit of the volcano and knocked on the door. It was answered by an elderly woman who looked very much like the stereotypical sage, who saw their condition and promptly let them in. Her apartment was in the upper level of the volcano, which was now dormant. Immediately, she put some tea on the kettle and began inquiring of them as to what exactly they were up to in these parts of the sea, which weren't exactly known for their hospitability to humans. Personally, she had just gotten lucky and seen the ad for the apartment. She had wanted to move away and work on her novel for a long time, and this was the perfect opportunity. The previous tenant had been evicted for running an illegal pinochle game, and the place was now hers. She was even working on one of those rent to own deals. And so our protagonists related to her their tale, and how they had come to be in this part of the ocean, and where it was that they intended to go. She listened, in a very understanding manner, and even formulated all sorts of important advice that they could take with them on their trip. Most importantly, though, she called a whale-taxi, which would arrive in thirty to forty-five minutes, and give them a ride to the western shore of the Eurasian landmass. She even offered to pay for it, so kind was she. In the meantime, whilst they waited, she conferred upon them several gifts that they would know how to use "when the time came" and also gave them advice regarding their quest, for she had indeed heard of the mystical basketball hoop which they sought.

And so, when the cetacean taxicab arrived, it was with high hopes that they departed the volcano. Indeed, this was a much more positive experience than Bari's last experience in that volcano. Almost on par, nay, at least on par, and coming very close to exceeding his first experience there, when he was a younger boy.

Not much, snot much was to be said about the trip on the whale-taxi, though it became somewhat excitable whenever they got close to other whales, and somewhat less excited when they finally approached and finally passed the coast of Wales. Finally they were dropped off on a beach, with little hoopla. And what would you know, but the beach was covered in salad bushes. And again they struggled through those with unconquerable wills, and they kept walking, not heeding, or heeding as little as possible, the struggles they were enduring. For salad is one of the most difficult materials to walk through, almost rivaling quicksand. The way the lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, and other fruits and vegetables clung together on one bush made it extremely difficult to traverse. On top of this, the dressing which topped each plant and dripped down its side only made the passing more difficult. But finally things cleared up, and ever onward they walked, for they say that where there's a will there's a way, and at this point, Arthur weighed about one hundred and thirty pounds, which was quite light for his height. This was of course all due to his current plight. But they sallied ever onward, Arthur not noticing the rapid loss of weight, which many people would be envious of, which he was undergoing. Bari's weight, of course, did not fluctuate, because all he needed was air to inflate. Even still, this was a tough experience for him as well. And as they walked they always hoped that Mount Hockey would come into view, hoping to catch at least the briefest glimpse, and to know that their objective was indeed real, and to at least vaguely gauge the challenge which was in store for them. But the mountain was ever elusive. Had they been given bad directions? How did the cowz! know about it anyway? And the antlers as well? They probably hadn't left their homes in that forest in decades, if not centuries, if not ever, particularly the antlers, who were stationary, or seemed so at least. Could it be that they were a menagerie of lying rapscallions, a pack of untruthful rakes? It was entirely possible that the cowz! and antlers were just now having a laugh at having given Bari and Arthur incorrect directions, perhaps to a mountain and a basketball court that did not exist at all. Oh, what a hoot that would be!!!!!!!! At this point, tallying up all their weariness, their exhaustion, their fatigue, and other synonyms for being tired, it was extremely easy to place the blame elsewhere. But in truth the blame lay nowhere, it was merely just an extremely long journey they had undertaken. In fact, blame could not physically lay anywhere. In the most ancient days she had been enchanted in such a manner that made it so that she could not lay down. Unfortunate, isn't it?

So was the situation Bari and Arthur found themselves in, for the ground upon which they had tread had given way to a massive labyrinth. At its entrance stood a ghastly spectre that had once been a Taco, that proud, ancient, noble race who nowadays was only to be found in the Kogajuntoo Mountains.

Long ago, this land, which had once been a field, had been raised up into a maze, three thousand leaugues across, though only three miles long. And so our protagonists, keen-eyed as they might be, could not see its end in either direction, and thusly found no course to attempt passage and hope that they might walk enough to reach that end. All of this had been foreseen ages ago when a prophet and enchanter saw in the distant future the adventure upon which our heroes would embark, and desired to add his own twist to it, and thusly gain some of the royalties garnered by the tale. Don't worry, I've blocked his recent attempts to empty my bank account. His solution to his desire for fame and fortune by capitalizing on the ideas of others was this: he created a maze filled with what was, in his opinion, a myriad of comic adventures and goofy characters that could enhance the plot (I'm grateful for all this, don't get me wrong, but I have to question his motives in doing all this).

To our heroes, this was a welcome change of pace from the endless salad fields they had been forced to trudge through since they left the enchanted forest. They even ceased to trudge, skipped right up through perambulating, and began to saunter up to the entrance, upon which the Taco's spectre greeted them most half-heartedly. Bari was the first to address him.

"Oh noble spectre, might we pass your gates, so that we might solve this labyrinth and gain passage to Mount Hockey, wherein we might find the first basketball hoop, that primus of sports, and so that I might once more become human, and my comrade may find a new future for himself?"

"I suppose"

"Why, shouldn't you issue forth some manner of challenge? You know, ensure that we are worthy to pass through your maze?"

I don't particularly care. Just go through already and leave me alone."

Arthur could completely understand the sentiment of the Taco's spectre, and thus perceived that the time had drawn night wherein he should add his own opinions to this discourse.

"Oh Taco. Why is it that you are so callous? You give us permission to pass, which is all we need, yet it pains me to see you reduced to such a state, for I have suffered as you have. I have known the cruelties of indifference. Tell us your tale, oh Taco, so that perhaps my advice might be of some avail to lift your spirits, and perhaps you might guide us through the labyrinth of which you are the sentinel"

That had been all the Taco's spectre had been waiting for: an opportunity to disclose his self-pity, to speak of his misfortunes in an arrogant, yet self-deprecating tone, and ultimately waste the time of our heroes, so that they might not reach the summit of Mount Hockey.

Now, let me give you some insight that not many of my characters know, and let's hope they don't overhear me, for it could foil the while plot of this tale. The enchanter who had created the labyrinth was the first being in the universe to acquire sentience, and he had had enough time to concoct a story which he would relate to the beings that would come after him about how, through his generosity and mercy, he had created them all, had given life to them, and above all, bestowed the gift of pizza. In his old age, he had passed into obscurity, faded from the memory of those he had first enchanted, and while he had not ceased to exist, he had pretty much faded from the memory of the universe, and existed in their minds not as a being, but as a tradition. This paved the way for many false gods to lay the claim to the title of creator, though in fact there was no true deity, no single being to whom the universe could give credit for its existence. What a poor lonely thing that universe is, don't you think. It just came into existence, no parents to support and raise it, to encourage it to make the croquet team or to learn cello. Nobody there to help it get through those tough times when it doesn't make the croquet team or its girlfriend breaks up with it. And we all think we have it tough?

However, the ghost of this Taco had remained bewitched all these years, unable to leave the gates of the labyrinth, and not quite remembering why he was there. Oh, how he felt so sorry for himself! And so he did not hesitate to disclose his misfortunes to our protagonists, the first living beings he had seen in ages.

This is how he came to be in the position he found himself in, as he told Bari and Arthur:

"I was born into the race of Tacos in a noble age, during the springtime of our species. And while by no means the most noble of families, it mattered not, for even the poorest Tacos found themselves in league with the wealthiest humans, and far above their pariahs. At the time our race prospered, and we were plentiful, for humankind had not yet discovered that we were edible, a discovery which would almost lead to our extinction. In fact, the only reason my race is still alive at all is that humans discovered how to synthesize and mass-produce food products that tasted like us, and ceased in their desire to consume us. It was too late for us to regain glory though. But let us forget that digression, as I'd much rather speak of myself.

Like I had mentioned, I was poor amongst Tacos, but through my valor and wisdom I soon rose to become a great captain and eventually a general in the army of the Tacos. But, one day we found ourselves entangled in civil war with our neighbours, the Burritos, and I found myself mortally wounded in battle. Lettuce and cheese was bleeding profusely, and I wasn't producing enough chicken to seal the wounds, and death became ever closer. In my last delirious moments, my god appeared to me and indicated that though I had not led the most wholesome life, I could gain a second chance if I would serve him in death. I was promised a nice retirement package and a dental plan, none of which I've seen any hint of. In fact, I haven't even seen God since that day, but I assume he has died or else forgotten about my existence and indentured servitude (and I cannot blame him for either one of those), and thus I remain unable to leave the gates of this maze. Though I do yearn for the flowers of the macaroni and cheese plants over there so that I might satiate my appetite, I am unable to leave this post, for fear keeps me here. Even though he probably no longer remembers me, it's not a risk I want to run. I've heard that if I disobey him he'll send me to a bad place, though I'm not quite sure what he means by that.

Bari and Arthur mulled this story over. Surely, it was at the least heart-wrenching, even if it was a little too self-indulgent. Being the kindhearted fellows they were, and also realizing that they might have something to gain, they decided that they would attempt to liberate this Taco.

The problem they encountered was that this Taco, being enchanted as he was, was physically unable to move from a certain area at the entrance to the labyrinth, and moreover, he did not wish to budge, but merely to continue speaking of his misfortunes. Maybe it was his own self-pity that enchanted him, and the magic of the enchanter had long ceased to exist. Certainly, if free will was extant in the universe, some guy telling him that he was physically unable to move didn't necessarily mean that was true. As you and I know, this god was a fraud anyway. The Taco probably didn't want to improve his situation at all, for then he'd have nothing to complain about. Despite Bari and Arthur wanting to help, and sincerely putting in an effort to listen to the Taco's story and offering him an escape route, he didn't want to help himself, and it wasn't their problem. Plus, they were extremely sick of hearing his whining. So, after a spell, they sidestepped him and entered the maze.

After taking a bit of extra precaution not to step on the neonatal salad plants waiting in the foyer, they gazed up when they saw that Arthur had trod upon concrete, and Bari floated above the very same substance, and it seemed that they had no entered a labyrinth, but a vast warehouse, bereft of anything that might take up any amount of space and thusly make it seem even a little bit smaller. But so it was that even without there being anything in the warehouse to obstruct their view, they still could not see the end. Between enchantment and technology, they really can do anything nowadays! Hell, they had made it seem like this warehouse was a maze from the outside.

They were confounded! Astounded! Other adjectives, perhaps ones that also rhyme and also describe a state of confusion or amazement.

And then the obligatory magical explanation came in the form of the most impressive moustache either one of them had ever laid eyes upon descending upon them. This moustache possessed the most immaculate handlebars, and would randomly change colour. Beyond that the fact that it flew and spoke, it demeanor made them assume that it was an enchanted moustache. In fact, it is unknown even to this day which aspect of the moustache gave away its magical nature before it confessed these very facts of its own volition.

When said moustache finally reached our protagonists, they exchanged the obligatory introductions, each party gave the other some background information, and they sat down to discuss matters over some doughnuts that sat on a table that had just appeared. The moustache, in a roundabout fashion that I will make an effort to make a little more succinct, as he had a habit of talking a bit too much, told them that while this looked like a labyrinth, it was actually more of an obstacle course set out by the enchanter to prevent others from reaching the other side. This enchanter didn't really like anything being too convenient for anyone but him, plus he prided himself on designing tricks such as this. In order to reach the exit, they would need to perform a set of tasks, some menial, some that might actually seem impressive, and to do so to the satisfaction of le magical moustache. Upon completion of these tasks, not only would the champion(s) gain entrance to the exit of the maze, but they would each have the honour of donning the very moustache they were then speaking to. Even though there were two of them doing the challenges, the moustache assured them that they would both receive the promised moustache. It was, after all, magical. However, nobody to this point had yet possessed the skill set, luck, determination, and variety of other intangibles necessary to pass through.

And so this is what the four sided triangles had decided: given their desire to start history anew, and my desire to hopefully maintain the highest degree of originality possible, they would no longer be four sided triangles, and in fact, they would abandon completely the notion of being any sort of shape with a mismatched quantity of sides and total degree of angles.

In the country known as the United States of America, there is a very popular sport known as football which I am quite fond of, and of which the most significant league is known as the National Football League, or NFL. In the NFL, there was a team named the Cleveland Browns, who had a long and storied history but had been largely unsuccessful in recent years and were struggling to generate revenue. Thusly, the owner moved them to Baltimore and christened them the Ravens, after the Edgar Allen Poe poem. Several years after this move, the city of Cleveland received a brand new franchise, and they dubbed the team they were given the Browns, after their predecessors. This new team was given the rights to the Browns name and history, though they were not descended directly from the Browns of old. The Ravens, however, though they were the Browns of old, began anew with their history. I mention this because a large issue with the triangles was deciding whether to keep their history or start anew like the Ravens, and let another species become the four sided triangles and also assume their history.

After much debate, it was decided that they would maintain their history in their memories, but not refer to it as the same lineage. The new lineage began the moment they transformed. What they were to transform into was flying sharks, or flarks, a creature I'm ripping off from a play I wrote for theater class in college, which involved the consequences that occurred when a flark met my sociology teacher in a warehouse on the planet Trenton in the New Jersey Galaxy. Now, while I'm sure the concept of flying sharks has been done before, I might specify that these were Selachimorpha of the order Hexanchidae, or in the colloquial, cow sharks. So, they completed their transformation, and set out to become noble and fair administrators of justice, though never rulers, throughout the Universe, and began on the nearest planet, which happened to be our dearest mother Earth!

Knowing that it was Bari's home planet, they invited him to take a ride with them back to his abode. After giving it some thought, he thanked them for the offer and kindly refused. He was not quite sure if he was ready to return, and he had regretted not exploring the moon a bit more on his last trip there. Perhaps another time he would go home, hopefully this time not attempting to once more play the part of Ophelia. So it passed that the time came for the flarks to search out injustice on Earth and rectify it, and so they began preparations for the swim. Bari thanked them for their hospitality, and as they flew toward Earth, he began to explore that planet's Satellite.

There are many people who state that in order to live out one's life in a complete and fulfilling manner, they must live each day as if it were their last. Until now, Arthur had tried to do just that, but found that it only multiplied, squared, and took to much higher exponents his misery and paranoia. Because of this he became morbidly afraid, and almost died of fright on several occasions, all because he was convinced he was going to die at any moment. He had essentially become paralyzed, and even trying out for the basketball team had taken copious amounts of persuasion, for in his delirious delusions, he mistook all the basketballs to be bombs, and all the other players to be grizzly bears. This madness also compelled the other kids to ostracize him, for they, like all proper teenagers, believed themselves to be immortal, and so they naturally shunned anyone who thought of themselves as being mortal and prone to such impossible things like death. Particularly they despised those of Arthur's ilk, who were so paranoid about their mortality and obsessive with preventative measures.

Now, Bari's company had helped somewhat in alleviating Arthur's anxiety problems, and through the course of their journey, he had slowly begun learning to live each day as the day that it was, and letting the day that was to be his last remain a mystery. Hey, when it came it came, he had no control over the calendar. However, bad habits are rather hard to break, and Arthur couldn't help but fret when the moustache issued its first challenge.

Roughly one score of phantasms were conjured, all in baseball uniforms. The moustache assumed the guise of a coach, complete with a baseball cap and whistle, and told Bari and Arthur that ten people were going to be chosen to make the team, and both of them must make the final cut should they desire to proceed to the next challenge. Bari, though a basketball, was confident, since he had played little league baseball for about eight years as a youth. But poor Arthur was a nervous wreck. The phantom figures all around him seemed to be in better shape than he was, and their gear seemed so professional, as if they had been playing baseball not only for their whole lives, but for the duration of many lifetimes, and for the lifetimes of their ancestors, dating back to ancient days, so far back as to have been playing when said ancestors were but single celled baseball playing organisms. Bari told him to calm his nerves, for as that was all somewhat likely, it was just as likely that they were spoiled rich kids whose parents had given them all they wanted, and in this case all they had wanted would have been top notch baseball equipment. The truth, as was usually the case, lay somewhere between those two extremes, as both of those cases were indeed true to some extent. Some were ancient spirits, playing baseball from the earliest days of the earth, and some were infants when compared to the former, but had wealthy parents who bestowed upon them all the quality equipment that they could hope for.

And so they began with sprints, at which our protagonists excelled, as they'd spent a fairly hefty portion of their time since leaving the enchanted forest fleeing from creatures that would have eaten them had they not run sufficiently quickly. The rest of the tryout, which seemed to last a couple days, though only a couple of hours indeed actually expired, proceeded much like that, with our protagonists excelling in most of the tasks, and at worst, never performing in less than a mediocre fashion. In the end, when the coach moustache lined them up, Bari was the fourth of ten chosen for the team and Arthur the tenth. The relief at being chosen completely wiped out all the anxiety Arthur had felt whilst waiting, and he didn't even care that he was the last kid chosen. Unlike the schoolyard basketball games, when he was the last kid chosen, he had been the last of all the kids. In this case at least, he was the last kid chosen to make the team. Several there were behind him who hadn't even made that cut. He could handle being the worst of the best. It was much better than being the worst of the whole lot for sure. They were then given the option of going out and playing with the team, being guaranteed contracts for the next three seasons, or they had the option of proceeding to the next challenge, whatever it might be. Of course they chose the challenge. Even semi-professional baseball could not deter them from their will to achieve this goal. Upon their having chosen the second challenge, a kitchen appeared before them, wherein they were instructed to bake a chocolate cake. The trick was this: they were given no chocolate, but must utilize alchemy to transfigure the codfish they were given into chocolate, without leaving any hints of a fish-like taste.

This was Arthur's turn to shine, as he had studied alchemy in high school, and had gotten the best grade out of all the students in the class. And so he set about giving instructions to Bari, and soon enough the codfish was going through the filter that they had made and coming out the other side as chocolate. Using this chocolate, they baked a cake using the traditionally prescribed methods. Upon testing, the moustache, who had by now donned the guise of a food connoisseur, complete with his own moustache, deemed it satisfactory, and proceeded to issue the next challenge, which would be the penultimate challenge of the challenge.

Because three is generally held to be a magical number, with many proverbs such as "third time's the charm" and "two is company but three is a crowd" revolving around it, it so happened that this this third challenge that the moustache would issue would also be the last. The enchanter that had created the maze had decided upon three as an appropriate quantity of challenges to issue because three seemed an appropriate quantity of anything. It just had that ring to it. Now, this challenge was the only one that was consistent from competitor to competitor, as the first two components of the triumvirate had always been completely arbitrary, created by magic that the moustache guardian had no control over. They were chosen as if by the machine that chooses the powerball winners in the lottery competitions. There were balls in some other dimension, one with any possible challenge written on it, and the ones that were randomly chosen were the ones the moustache conjured up. A simple process, once one has a decent grasp on these sorts of hyper-dimensional magic. However, the third challenge was always the same, and was held to be the most challenging of the three challenges, no matter what the first two happened to be. Of course, nobody had ever dared to challenge this issue regarding the difficulty of challenges, for such a challenge to the challenge seemed foolish. And nobody would dare challenge the foolishness of the aforementioned challenge.

What made this one so difficult was that the pass/fail aspect of its nature was entirely subjective, left to the discretion of the moustache in the absence of the enchanter that had originally created it. Bari and Arthur both were required to write an essay of precisely two hundred words that explained why they thought they deserved to be allowed to pass through to the exit of this labyrinth.

Being a writer, I probably try to make things seem a bit more daunting and dramatic than they really are. The truth is that in all the time this labyrinth had existed, our protagonists were only the fourth and fifth beings to ever pass through, due to how remote the location was, and that nobody ever really wanted to tread the path to Mount Hockey, let alone climb it. The basketball court at the top had faded into obscurity in the minds of humans, and besides, it was well known that many dangerous creatures made their homes upon the path to its summit. So, the first three people that had come through had also been on their own lil' quests for Mount Hockey's basketball court. Oddly enough, the first had failed in the first task, the second in the second, and the third in the third. History did indeed bode well for our peerless protagonists, whom providence proposed might pass, provided perhaps that they propelled pens across paper and provided the prescribed essay. Alliteration is fun. I'm going to do it more later. But for now, we're going to leave this incarnation of Bari and focus on another. Chapter twelve will furnish their essays, fear not.
Chapter XI

The clouds were on fire, and all who looked up towards them were astounded at the manner in which the flames leapt from the sky, and how many cetaceans, covered in flame, fell down to the sea. Baritone Juicebox, along with Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen, his once human but now cloud porpoise friend, fought the invading humans to the best of their ability, but unfortunately their best was no match for the multitude of humans that ascended to the clouds with the wicked purpose of destroying the purpose of the porpoises and claiming the clouds as their own, as they had laid waste to all the lands of the earth over the course of World War 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971.

But fear not, oh noble reader! For conveniently placed plot twists are always to be found by those who are in need of them, especially those of just cause, such as the cloud porpoises were. And so it was that the fates of the cloud porpoises and the flarks intertwined, intermingled, and in some cases, interbred, and even interbread. You see, enchanters are to be found everywhere, and most of them have no profession other than enchanting, no family to worry about taking care of, and thusly have nothing better to do, being that all their time is free time and so they don't care if it is spent wisely or not, than to meddle in the affairs of others. Indeed, this is one of their primary occupations, as they don't seem to feel that they have enough affairs of their own to keep them busy, and thusly need the affairs of others to mess with. There was one in particular that had taken a special interest in the saga of Baritone Juicebox, and even though I have ultimate control over what transpires, I don't mind others occasionally meddling and introducing elements that I hadn't foreseen, and thusly giving me new angles and challenges. So, this particular enchanter, henceforth known has Ydrahgathrun, which translates to "enchanter who has vested much interest in the saga of Baritone Juicebox", held two of the fates of the quixotic Bari in separate beakers, and slowly poured them into a common vessel.

And so these two universes had went awry for a couple moments, with everything becoming discoloured, disfigured, and dis-many other things, with black holes opening and doughnut holes closing. And then it passed, and in the same universe Baritone Juicebox was at once on the moon and in the clouds. They'll meet eventually, but what was most important was that the flarks were coming towards the earth, and were now in the same universe as the cloud porpoises and Bari. As they approached, they noticed the havoc and commotion which was being wreaked, and took setting these matters aright as their first task.

Descending with all the power they could muster in their shark-wings, they came upon the clouds in which the battle was taking place, and immediately set about casting the humans from the clouds, for it was clear that they were in the wrong. As hard as the porpoises could try, and for sure they could muster up a great deal of spirit, for they were indeed defending their homes, they were not meant to be warring creatures. That was not their nature, and it hadn't mattered for so long because they lived in peaceful isolation from all wars. But that barrier had now been broken and so these peace loving creatures were forced to war, a war which they had no idea how to fight. They needed help. And in their minds they pleaded for help. They pleaded to the universe that they had brought nothing but good to to bring them some sort of aid. For though they had helped the universe in almost every proverbial arena, war was not at all their forte, and it now showed. And this plea was indeed answered.

Fortunately for the cloud porpoises, sharks are much more naturally powerful than humans, and so the humans were disposed of quickly and efficiently, without staining the clouds too badly. And so it came to pass that the cloud porpoises were saved and the majority of the remnants of humanity were destroyed. They would survive until the end of the planet, but never again would they regain their former dominance, nor their wickedness of old. It also came to pass that several of the flarks recognized Bari, having just left him on the moon. Bari, however, espoused that he had not been to the moon since his suicide attempt, and he had certainly never been to the grilled cheese nebula, and contrary to popular belief, never before had he juntrificated before. Being sharp, keen, and even quick-witted and shrewd, both the flarks and the cloud porpoises helped to piece together the story. Their first attempt went horribly awry:

"So, Bari, these flarks, when they encountered you on the moon, had travelled back in time and seen you before you jumped. Then, in coming to Earth, besides the normal time that had passed, some extra time had been thrown in, enough to ensure that you had alighted upon our clouds in the precise moment of our most dire need."

At this point, one of the flarks eructed. I wanted to find occasion to use the palabra "eruct" because I was just reading Don Quixote, and he said that eruct was essentially a classy manner in which to say belch. This reminded me of the English teacher I had my junior year of high school, who related to us how the Canterbury Tales were really about farting. Thusly it should be inferred that the bulk of quality literature revolves around themes of bodily functions. I feel I have failed thus far in this respect, for which I apologize.

Meanwhile, the flarks and cloud porpoises were still trying to deduce the nature of the events which had just transpired, while also trying to finish off the previous day's crossword puzzle. Bari chimed in that he had felt something odd at the moment that he had entered the atmosphere of the earth, from which they finally figured out that reality had split into multiple parts.

The truth is that in this work, string theory and all of those multiple universe theories were correct. with new universes being formed by every action, non-action, choice, decision, and pastry. Bari's case, as I will tell you, and then let my characters in on the secret, was a special one. See, the three parts that his story split into were kept apart from the other universes, separate but equal, (so far as that is actually possible, which is really not so much. They were pretty much just separate.) which is a terrible law that the United States used to enforce, held. They were free to intermingle with one another should the opportunity arise, but no new universes would be created from these three, and when the course of these adventures had run its course, it could return to the mainstream of universes.

Now, they had no idea just how many universes Bari's reality, for this reality clearly revolved around him, had divided into, and they only knew that it was an integer between two and infinity.

Being that the flarks and cloud porpoises coexisted so well, some of them resolved to remain behind in the clouds and live out their lives there, while attempting to return the Earth to its former glory. The others, though enamoured of the cloud porpoises, their wisdom, and their cooking, felt an obligation to help protect the universe, to administer justice and redress inequities. Being that they were headed to space, they offered to take Bari to the moon to meet himself, an offer which he accepted with both excitement and resignation, for though great was the promise of this adventure, he had never been happier than when he was living with the cloud porpoises. He left his friends, assuring them that their roads would once again cross, no matter where each road eventually led. So determined was he that he would eventually go to the gym with extreme diligence, and work out to the point where he was considered rather buff, and even jacked. And so it would be no problem to lift his own road and cross its path with that of the cloud porpoises. That, alas, does not concern us.

Taking leave of them, they flew to the moon. Bari found this journey to the moon much more enjoyable than the previous ones, as he now had no intention of ending his life, but only of living it, though he once more found himself looking human. He kept his sweater, but being away from the porpoises, he couldn't really expect to maintain their physical features. This flight took about three days, with only two days of actual travel occurring, as they passed many sights worth seeing, for though space is normally treated as a void, it had really done nothing to earn the aforementioned reputation.

In the course of the time in which the flarks had taken their leave of Bari and they had had their adventure upon Earth, and their return flight, Bari had the opportunity to explore a nicely-sized portion of the surface of the moon, which was neither barren nor made of cheese, as he had been taught as a youth. He found it to be nifty, swell, rad, and even divertido.

When the flarks had left Bari, it had been on a sort of borderline. It was in that area where the denizens of the earth ceased to be able to see the surface of the moon, for only one side of it could actually be seen from that planet. Not that they could see it in much detail, but there was a side that indeed contained much that they could only speculate, hence the phrase:

"there is no shark side of the moon really. As a matter of fact, it's all shark".

This stems from the rumours which had always existed regarding the existence of a shark side of the moon. The fact was that the whole satellite was inhabited by sharks, but humans couldn't tell that because they didn't have the eyes to spot the sharks floating around from earth. Eventually he would stumble into the part that was a little more heavily shark infested though, and I'll be sure to tell you all about it. But as I said, he was now in a transitional portion, and he had come to a forest. This wasn't an enchanted forest in the traditional sense, but it was a pretty bizarre grouping of trees. Now, while it wasn't enchanted, I tend to define enchanted forests as those where the majority of the trees possess some semblance of sentience. Here, that was not the case, but most of the trees were the sort that were known as Psychedelic Firs. These are nothing other than what their name claims them to be. They are, at their heart, fir trees. Unlike most fir trees, they do possess a staunchly psychedelic nature to them, though. This being that they are prone to randomly change colour. All the gallimaufry of colours of the rainbow they would pass through, and then some. This quite dazzled Bari, who was used to his trees staying the same colour. After a while of walking, he became accustomed to this though, and eventually began to enjoy it. He had always wanted to see the northern lights, and this was kind of the same thing, but applied to trees instead of the sky. Nothing dangerous was to be found in this forest. Here no harm would come to him. It was merely an interesting place. The creatures which inhabited it were actually just as weird as the trees from which they fed. Mostly they were creatures rather similar to those which live on earth, but everything here shared the colour changing nature of the trees. The fish lived above the water and the mammals in it. Some of the trees were upside down. But what could you expect from a place that had only recently made the investment in an atmosphere?

Here he walked, just looking around, and for the first time in a long time really enjoying his surroundings. Sure, he had liked the triangles, and accompanying them on their adventures, but this he had found to be a rather peaceful place. Odd that he had chosen it as the place from which to begin his suicidal mission. Looking back, none of that made sense to him. Sure, he had hated his job. He had hated the position in which he had found himself in society. Everywhere he looked there was definitely something he despised. But here he had come to realize that all he had needed to do was to leave that world behind. He knew that his home world wasn't the one for him, and that he couldn't associate with them. He was simply of a different ilk. But that didn't mean life wasn't for him. life was very much for him. he just needed to find a place that enabled him to live it in a fashion which he could appreciate. Here, he had found that. All life here consisted of was him walking around at his own leisure, picking delicious fruits and different varieties of pizza. It was as if he had found a home in the Arcadia of old, living the pastoral life of a recluse, living off the land and it's bizarre multi-coloured trees. And of course, like all good things, this too came to an end. This end was reached when he finally hit the edge of the forest and entered the side of the moon so heavily shark infested that it was commonly known as the shark side of the moon.

Back in the days which were commonly known as the "good ole days", but were scientifically referred to as the Carbunthic era, the first life forms came into existence on the moon. Evolution immediately came into existence with life, because they didn't have anyone so foolish as to deny its existence on the moon. Much like Earth, one of the later species that came into existence became one of the dominant ones. They were known as sharks, and besides sharing a name, they were also very closely biologically related to the creatures on Earth known as sharks. The most obvious difference between the two species is that one made their abode in the water while the other tended to make their home in the air. I guess this makes them somewhat like the flarks. However, the sharks that live on the moon still swim, albeit through the air, which is akin to flying, but different. I hate to be forced to utilize blatant unoriginality, but this is the difference:

1: Flying, as defined by the great author Douglas Adams, is "throwing yourself at the ground and missing."

2: Swimming is floating around in water and propelling yourself in whatever direction you would like to move.

Now that I've elaborated on that matter, which I'm sure you found fascinating, let's move on to matters concerning the plot, which I'm sure you'll care even more about. The moonsharks could only inhabit this one side of the moon full time, for they became paranoid about people on earth spotting them and then subsequently launching missions to discover the truth of the nature of life on the moon and then subsequently destroying any semblance of their civilization. Of course, many of the few historians, astronomers, jugglers, and general intellectuals who knew about the moonsharks originally believed that this was because they could not gain the express written consent of the beings indigenous to the other side, and were so forced to remain on one side most of the time. The truth is that we never really found out why the moonsharks preferred to stay on the shark side of the moon. Maybe it was to maintain the identity of that one side as the shark side. Either way, they would cross over on occasion. But generally those trips consisted of brief forays in search of food or other necessities. They certainly didn't like being seen by humans, for to be seen by humans always meant to risk destruction.

Bari was currently nearing the borderline of the shark and the less shark side, as he could tell by the increasing quantity of sharks which floated about him as he walked. In the not so distant distance, he could see throngs of the animals swimming slightly above the ground, going about their business, and in doing so, making him increasingly nervous. As we've mentioned on a few occasions, Bari's favourite week of the year was shark week, and over the course of his life, he had accumulated a wealth of knowledge regarding sharks. Part of this wealth, which possessed no inherent monetary value, included the fact that on average, four people are killed every year by sharks. However, the amount of sharks killed by people every year is much, much higher. So, while he proceeded with caution, he did not proceed with fear. He was very wise in this, and he did not know that he was so wise, and this is why:

The moon, about seven score and five years ago, had fallen prey to a drought that you could see as equivalent in magnitude to the flood that many mythologies say wiped out the bulk of the population of the known world. There were only two options for the creatures which inhabited the moon, and those were to adapt or to die. Most of them were extremely picky in their eating habits, and didn't even consider eating anything else when the plants that they preferred died out. In fact, there were only two species that did survive. The first was a plant that was known as a Hijartial, who survived without feeding, and in fact died when they ate. Droughts served them well, completely removing any temptation that existed to try eating sometime. the second was the sharks. Oddly enough, there was only one thing that the sharks upon the moon really did not like eating, and that was the Hijartrial plant. Eventually more forms of life did come back to the moon through immigration and evolution and such, but for a while it was rather barren.

You might wonder, upon hearing that, question, if you are the inquisitive type, what exactly it is that you are hearing. The following are questions that might occur to you:

"If the only thing they wouldn't eat is the only thing left alive, how did they survive?"

Well, they adapted in a very strange manner. This was that their stomach inexplicably became able to digest intangible things, such as ideas and emotions. It is said of many animals on earth that they are able to sense fear, and that is also true of the moonsharks, who liked to eat it because it was so easy for them to find. When not many foods were easy to find, anything that was easy prey became treasured, and thus revered as a delicacy.

While I rambled on about all those matters, Bari perambulated on as stoically as he ever had towards the shark side and eventually crossed the border. He was astounded by everything he saw around him. it was like that part of the aquarium that consists of a tunnel that is surrounded on the sides and above with water and various sea creatures. However, Bari was surrounded by sharks and only sharks and there was no water. He liked it. It was much different from the other side, which was much more barren. This one thronged with life, but in an extremely pastoral way. His first thought upon seeing this sight was:

"neat o"

Had he been a butcher, it might have been:

"meat o"

And had he been the president, it might have been:

"veto"

Overall, he found that the area was pretty groovy. One might declare it the bee's knees, though there were no bees to be found and nothing particularly interesting was going on with their knees anyway. There will be some bees later on, however, and their existence will prove to be the cause of yet another adventure. He grabbed on to the proverbial coattails of a passing shark and rode with that creature without it noticing him for a while. What mild tempered sharks were to be found here! Floating around mildly, while pleasant, is nothing to contribute to a thrilling plot, and Bari realized this and leapt off to catch the crest of a wave of air that was passing by, which carried him until gravity gently deposited him at the edge of a cave of fair, not to be confused with the caves of fare which are to be found on our earth.

And what could he do but enter? There was one other option, which was not to enter, and that was not at all appealing to the point where he didn't he even really give it fair consideration as an option for Bari, as we have seen, had always been one with an inclination towards adventure.

And what a fair it was that he beheld, with much fare to behold. Oh, this was not fair at all! How blessed was our beloved protagonist in this very moment. Besides the fare of the feast he beheld, there was all manner of games, rides, and a crowd consisting of all sorts of beings. Why, there were humans and every manner of biped. He spied four legged beasts that he knew from Earth, and many that he had never before laid eyes upon. There were also creatures with odd numbers of legs, with no legs, with innumerable teeth and countless eyes. How fantastic this was! What a treat it was to find himself amongst such a venerable variety of various beings! What could he do but mingle? Of course there was always the option of not mingling, but as a I said before and as we have witnessed ourselves so many times, Bari was not the sort that would shy away from the prospect of a nice solid adventure.

And what an adventure it was to partake in these carnival games, winning all manner of prizes. The loathed that he could not bring the giant inflatable hammer or the novelty beverage dispensing helmet home with him. Or perhaps he could find a way. He had witnessed so much magic by this point, he was pretty sure that there was yet more to be found.

So it was that our protagonist, Baritone Juicebox, wandered for what seemed like countless eras within the cave of fair. He thought he could have stayed there forever, given the chance. Fortunately he was given the chance, and this chance actually managed to cause his opinion of the fair to change drastically. Read on, and we'll find out what happened.

After much meandering, feeding, and revelry, Bari finally came to the edge of the fair, where there sat upon the throne, or floated up above it, a head. The head was adorned with a hat, the sort that you might associate with some variety of magician, sorcerer, or enchanter. Two hands floated in front of him, and one grasped in its clutch a wooden wand, waving it about, apparently casting some variety of spell or enchantment with every wave. In his eyes there was a malicious fervor, and below them resided the most impressive moustache this incarnation of Baritone Juicebox had ever beheld. Surely a man, or whatever he was, who possessed such a moustache must be a very esteemed being, or so Bari thought.

You see, this moustache did not belong to this being, this lord of the fair. If Bari had been able to remember the incident involving a giant squid and a wormhole that we discussed earlier, he would have recognized it as the moustache that had told him that it would one day belong to him. This was the very same moustache that was at the moment issuing challenges to Bari in another reality. Ooh, I sense some parallels developing within this plot.

Upon seeing Bari, this carnival lord internally began gusting with fear, for he recognized him as the one to whom the moustache truly belonged. Bari, though unaware of the reason, could sense that this floating head was afraid, and broke the proverbial ice between them in what he viewed as the least harmful, or most harmless, and generally the least threatening manner he could think of.

A simple "hello."

To which he received a grandiose and threatening

"Who are you that dares intrude upon my fair, to win my prizes and eat my food?"

Naturally, he asked this fully knowing the answer, for that answer had long been foretold.

Now, it was Bari's turn to feel threatened, and wanting to make that emotion as unapparent as possible, he responded in the most grandiose and foreboding manner he could devise.

"You know full well who I am! I am Baritone Juicebox, who has travelled a hefty quantity of the light years across the length of our universe, who with the mighty strength of his own arm and the miraculous amount of wit he possesses, saved the four sided triangles of the grilled cheese nebula from certain destruction!"

Oh, how the lord did quiver, but pulled from his quiver the big guns, from which he utilized the most ultra-impressive phrases he could possibly muster.

"Psh, Baritone Juicebox. I've certainly never heard of him. why, I am Milenkoooooo the Great, who had presided over this grand fair for several millennia since its inception, who is the keeper of every single soul who herein resides!"

"But not mine!" was the fervent response which our heroic hero provided, in an attempt to sound much braver and much more important than he actually felt himself to be. He had realized that it didn't really matter how brave or important he actually was. This Milenkoooooo guy was for some reason scared of him and if he could respond to every threat with a grand declaration, he figured he should be pretty safe.

"Oh, little do you know, fool! All these souls obey my every whim with the utmost acquiescence. Not a single devious thought has been thought in this place since it was first erected."

"Well, I have a devious thought upon my brain, and you are powerless! The over-indulgence of your words belies your fear, and your fear belies your vulnerability, which suggests that there is less truth to your words than you claim, oh Milenkoooooo!"

Now it was time for Milenkoooooo to pull out the extremely large guns. The biggest ones he had in his arsenal of grandiose speeches, which were reserved for particular moments such as this. Most of his pieces had been captured, and in an act of desperation, he was to use the queen.

"What hasty words you speak Bari, who comes into another's carnival and believes he knows the truths of its infrastructure immediately . I challenge you to single combat. A jousting match, if you will."

It was at this moment that the quick thinking Bari knew that Milenkoooooo was lying. Milenkoooooo had claimed to have never heard of Baritone and his legends, yet Bari had introduced himself as Baritone and yet Milenkoooooo had called him Bari. It was clear that he had heard some rumour of him. Now, Bari didn't necessarily think that he was worth having rumours of himself spread around the universe, but if they were to offer him some protection and make those who would otherwise kill him fear him, he wasn't going to pay heed to a little extraneous gossip.

So, with the following statement, Baritone Juicebox accepted Milenkoooooo's challenge:

"And I accept. What are your terms?"

Milenkoooooo laughed. I wish I could write down what it sounded like, but I'm not really sure how to sound it out and spell it. No, not at all. If you ever see me though, feel free to ask. I can give you a rough imitation. It's absolutely ridiculous and extremely stupid sounding, but it's a laugh worth knowing, lest you ever have to hear it yourself. Plus, if this foolish book is ever adapted for film, or if I make an audiobook out of it, I'll let you hear. It was a goofy laugh though. Not at all threatening, though Milenkoooooo thought just the opposite.

"My terms are simple" he said.

At this, two bicycles appeared, with one near each contestant. Milenkoooooo donned a novelty beverage dispensing helmet and his wand became a giant inflatable hammer.

"We are to mount upon our bicycles, equidistant to this mark on the ground, and charge at each other when the signal is given. After that first charge, we will continually re-charge. In the event that one or both of us is dismount, combat will continue until one part, that being you, discontinues combat. Is this fair?"

"Sounds good to me, except for the part where I surrender."

Milenkoooooo laughed again.

"Let's begin."

"Wait" said Bari. "What are the stakes?"

"You lose, you join the others here in their unending indentured servitude."

After a long pause, Bari responded with this:

"And what if you lose?"

Another Milenkoooooo laugh occurred.

"It won't happen, don't worry about it."

"But what if it does? We're making a bet here. We need stakes to exist for the case of each side winning, even if you don't see me having any shot at victory. You can't possibly be so asinine and arrogant. It makes that moustache look awful on you, and that's a beautiful moustache. I can't really imagine it looking bad in many places."

This incited Milenkoooooo's fury, and he charged. He would have caught Bari by surprise, but by now Bari had figured out that he shouldn't expect an honest fight from Milenkoooooo. So, he pedaled forward, inflatable hammer raised high.

Being that he had neglected to acquire a license to drive a motor vehicle when he had turned the prescribed age, Bari had grown accustomed to biking everywhere, and had much stronger legs than Milenkoooooo, who in fact had no legs. So, he was able to gain enough momentum to equal that of Milenkoooooo's charge, though he had started a bit earlier. However, Bari was a bit distracted at the novelty of how Milenkoooooo was able to pedal without legs, and that led him to lose his focus for that one crucial moment. In that moment, Milenkoooooo was able to dismount Bari, which just led to inflate his ego even further. So, he charged again, but Bari was focused this time, and he maintained the aforementioned focus by focusing very hard on how it was absolutely mandatory for him to focus, and struck Milenkoooooo with the hammer, powered by arms that had become extremely powerful from swimming through space.

Milenkoooooo was dismounted, and upon falling to the ground, continually smitten by Bari's infallible hammer. How Milenkoooooo's magic had enchanted its owner into believing himself more powerful than he actually was! In reality, his magic was only good for harmless pranks. He'd only been able to rule the souls in the carnival by force of persuasion and by distracting them with endless fun and games. Now, faced with a worthy opponent, he faltered, and was forced to surrender to Bari.

Of course, terms for the case of Bari's victory had never been decided upon, so being in the current position of power, Bari, who had never really been the assertive type, named his terms, with the threat of Milenkoooooo's death if they were not carried out to the ever present proverbial T. The terms were that Milenkoooooo would cancel the carnival, free the souls, and devote the rest of his natural life to works of charity, giving back what he had taken. Bari wanted nothing for himself but to be able to continue on his merry 'ole way. In addition, he also requested that Milenkoooooo's moustache be transferred to him, on the basis that he read it belonged to him in a prophecy that had fallen out of the sorcerer's hat. So, once the terms were satisfied, he had seen the souls sent back to their respective homes, and he had seen the carnival dissipate, and he saw Milenkoooooo escorted to the nearest soup kitchen, he continued walking on, feeling better than he ever had, now possessing the moustache that was truly his. And how handsome that was!
Chapter XII

Bari and Arthur, in another reality, were entangled in what seemed like an infallible web cast by this moustache. How do you manage to write an essay to prove yourself worthy of being able to travel on? How do you impress a moustache that is in itself so impressive? Truth. That was the strategy that they decided on. And this was the truth:

"The essay written by Arthur Crouton on the subject of why he should be allowed to continue on through the labyrinth"

There are several reasons why I feel that I should be allowed to pass through this labyrinth and continue onward in my quest for the summit of Mount Hockey. The first is that I believe that all the land of this Earth should be free for whoever desires to do so to roam about as they please. I cannot fathom that any man, moustache, or enchanter should possess the voracity allowing them to claim that he has made property that is public private and in doing so, block the paths to other public lands. Furthermore, even if they did have that aforementioned right, and were not detaining us by force of magic, I desire to pass through here and to ascend Mount Hockey, where several magical and mythical tasks await me, the foremost of which is shooting my friend here through a basketball hoop so that he might regain his human form and so that I might find the proverbial new lease on life. And since I know that I am nearing the two hundred word cutoff, and I do not wish to be disqualified by such a triviality as a word count, let me ask you something: why not?

Arthur handed in his paper to the moustache, who looked at it, counted the words, and upon ascertaining that it did indeed contain precisely two hundred words, tossed it aside and declared that he had passed. Bari, scribbling furiously, looked up and asked

"Aren't you going to read it?"

"No, I was charged with the task of making sure you wrote an essay of precisely two hundred words regarding why you felt you deserved to pass through. I'm willing to take your word regarding the subject matter so long as the word count is precise. Only one person has ever gotten to this stage before, and they flunked because they included a salutation in their essay, and assumed that it counted towards the word count."

Upon hearing this, Bari quickly scribbled something out, and wrote a couple extra words at the end and then handed his essay in. Though we know that the moustache wasn't going to really pay attention to the subject matter, I'll share with you the essay that Bari ended up handing in, though it frustrated him that the effort he had put into constructing a reasonable thesis had been negated because this moustache wasn't a qualified literary critic, and could only count to two hundred, and precisely two hundred.

"Baritone Juicebox's essay on why he should be allowed to pass through the labyrinth and continue onwards"

When I was younger, my father often told me to think before I engaged in a variety of verbs such as acting, eating, and juggling. One day, he told me, while his own mouth was filled up with verbs and proverbs, to think before I think. How foolish, I thought to myself. Sometimes the stream of consciousness is a wonderful thing, and it's pretty nice not to filter my thoughts through other thoughts, to just let them come. And so, when you instructed me to write this essay, I decided to ignore your instructions and follow my own format. For I have more of the right to be giving the instructions. And I instruct you to tell me who you think you are that you have any right to prevent me from passing down this road. All I want to do is pass on to Mount Hockey, and I will tell you that this path is not yours. It belongs only to those who wish to tread upwards on it. And so, whether or not you deem my essay worthy, I will do just that. I shall climb Mount Hockey."

After those 190 words, Bari had heard the moustache say that he wasn't really reading for subject matter and that the salutation didn't count, so he quickly scribbled it out and counted his words, and finding himself ten short, chose to make the final ten the first diez palabras that came into his cabesa.

"Sandwich gardyloo gallimaufry zanahorias elefante whippersnapper onion e pluribus unum."

Upon scribbling down those last few words, he stood up and handed his paper to the moustache, who counted the words, and finding the essay to contain the proper amount, deemed that both of our protagonists had passed, and that all the rewards owed to them would be granted. First, the warehouse-labyrinth fell away, becoming one with the tierra that it had been part of before the magico had enchanted it. Second, each was handed a certificate of completion which could be presented to anyone that they had any sort of need to impress. Even if that person didn't understand quite what they had succeeded in doing, nobody has the power to deny the fact that a certificate holds a bit of sway at least. Third, and finally, the moustache resigned its sovereignty, was freed of the enchantment, and sat itself upon the faces of Baritone and Arthur, assuming whatever style it was that best suited the contours of the face of its owner. In Arthur's case, it was an elegant Fu Manchu which drooped down from his face and from then on would journey lower and lower towards the ground, occasionally allowing itself to be trimmed, but never shaven. Who would want to shave such a moustache anyway? For Bari, it became a handlebar, curling outwards and then inwards again in a never ending spiral pattern. Oh, what moustaches our protagonists now possessed. Who would dare challenge a man and a basketball who hoped to become man again who wore such majestic facial hair? Only fools would, certainly. Or one bound by oath and honour, as they would soon encounter.

For right before their eyes there now rose the lofty summit of Mount Hockey. Surely the distance they were destined to climb equaled the entire rest of the journey they had undertaken, or so it seemed. In fact, the mountain was much lower than the distance they had just travelled, having crossed several continents and an ocean, but this mountain rose quite high nonetheless. But, as always, they were up to this challenge.

Now, while all those action-packed plot lines were unfolding, some crazy interdimensional consciousness was at work, all bound by the powers contained within that singular moustache who assumed many guises across just as many dimensions.

To clear up matters for the future, since we'll be mentioning all three incarnations of Bari interacting with one another shortly, let's refer to the Baritone Juicebox that turned into a basketball as Bari number one, the one that died, became a deity, and then a cloud porpoise Bari number two, and the one who had embarked on the adventure of the grilled cheese nebula and who presently found himself on the moon Bari number three. Now, at this moment, Bari number two was aware of the existence of Bari number three, having ascertained from the story of the flarks that part of himself was currently present on the moon. Bari number three, reveling in his victory over Milenkoooooo, donned his moustache at the precise same moment as the Bari that had just won the challenge of the labyrinth, Bari number one. Because of this, and the mystical powers that the moustache possessed, Bari number one and Bari number three simultaneously remembered their adventure with the giant squid and the wormhole at Lake Spatula, and that the moustache they had seen after passing through the wormhole was the one they were wearing now. They also became aware of the existence of the other, though not number two, for he was, at the moment, clean shaven. He, though, knew of Bari number three, as we have mentioned. So, as it stands, Baris number one and three knew of each other, and number two knew of number three. Neither number one nor three knew of number two. Since Bari number two was currently flying uneventfully towards the moon, we'll pass over his story for the moment, and as we just covered a few of the escapades of number one, at this moment we'll go to the story of Bari number three, who had just defeated Milenkoooooo and was about to embark upon further adventures upon the moon.

A lonely messenger tree descended from the sky and etched its roots upon a spot of dark matter a couple feet above the ground, and from within its bark produced a rectangular box, from which emanated the aroma, along with an aura, of pepperoni pizza. There was a reason for this. Roughly fifteen minutes before the event described above, Baritone Juicebox had sent a telepathic message to Jim's Pancake House of Pizza and Oysters, requesting that, in order to satiate his hunger, they deliver unto his countenance a large pepperoni pizza. Now, Jim's Pancake House of Pizza and Oysters was not the nearest pizza place to the moon, but it was the only one he had remembered passing by en route from the grilled cheese nebula who claimed to deliver anywhere in the universe, for they had in their employment a full squadron of messenger trees, which travelled more efficiently than any being in the universe, save only the four sided triangles, back when they were called so. They also possessed an unfailing sense of direction. With that combination of talents, it only took this particular tree fifteen minutes to travel four and six-tenths of a light year, and the pizza he carried remained hot upon its arrival. So, while earth would've been geographically closer, it would probably take them several years to develop the technology to deliver to space, and then several days after that to get there. Certainly he'd die of hunger in that time span. And if not, well, odds were the pizza would at least be pretty cold. This was not the case with Jim's Pancake House of Pizza and Oysters!

Whilst waiting, which is truly the hardest part, Bari ruminated upon recent events, as well as a few events that were not so recent. His newfound moustache helped to bring an unprecedented clarity to his thoughts, and illuminated many memories which previously he had suppressed for various reasons. Of course, his stream of consciousness worked very similarly to the manner in which people claim that god works, that being mysteriously. So while he focused mainly on the knowledge of the existence of multiple selves that had come to him upon winning the moustache from Milenkoooooo, it also meandered to several other strange, wondrous places. I'll attempt to follow it as accurately as I can.

"I entreaty, oh moustache, that you impart upon me the information I require, for surely this is a matter of at least some import."

Now, the moustache was extremely wise, but its wisdom extended only to events and knowledge concerning its owner and what he was conscious of. So, while it could lend clarity to Bari's thoughts, it could not provide him with any new knowledge. Upon receiving Bari's question into his auditory faculties, the moustache considered the subjects about which it was being asked, and replied the best it could.

"Well, all I can tell you is that when you were at the brink of the earth's atmosphere, the earth noticed that you weren't very assertive, that your mind was divided about whether or not it wanted to complete the task that it had begun. So, it tried to give you everything you wanted. You know that you yourself were rejected by the Earth and sent back into space, signifying that part of you wanted to continue living, but either you wanted to live elsewhere besides your home planet, or you wanted to live on Earth but return later. I'd go for the latter, as a series of seemingly chance incidents brought you to the satellite of that planet. Now, you also know that part of you with an identical moustache continues to live on Earth, albeit in another reality. So, clearly, part of you wanted to return to life on earth and give it a second chance. When you were thinking that you wanted to live, but not on earth, were there any other options you were thinking of regarding the future?"

"Well, I had been attempting to commit suicide, so I'd assume that I at least casually thought about and maybe even briefly considered dying as an option."

"Then we can assume that you died in some other reality."

"Wow, that doesn't feel as bad as I thought it would. I hear people complaining all the time about not having any sort of significant other or spouse and claiming that they feel that part of them is either missing or dead or had died but had subsequently been resurrected on a remote island and regarded as a deity but was unable to reunite with itself because it was stuck in another universe. I feel nothing though. I wonder why. I also wonder, though, about the time when I first met you. Why didn't I remember that until now?"

"Because you lied to your father about where you had been. The inauthenticity of your words and also tus palabras took away your right to remember that particular experience."

"But I remember other things that I've lied about."

"They were not magical."

"Oh, I see. Enchantments and such. I've heard that they work in mysterious ways."

"They do indeed. Very mysterious."

"So, will I ever lose this moustache, like Milenkoooooo did when he lost it to me?"

"Theoretically you shouldn't, as you are by right the one whose face I should adorn. However, by certain fraudulent actions and abuse of the powers I bestow, you could lose that right and I shall free myself."

"What if I tried to shave you, would that be murder?"

"Yes, but you won't try to shave me."

"Why's that? oh, I don't care why. These handlebars are amazing. I can't imagine ever wanting to relinquish my right to this. When will my pizza be here?"

"Soon."

"Can you do any other magic tricks? Or juggle?"

"Yes."

Just as Bari was about to inquire about the nature of tricks that the moustache was capable of, the messenger tree arrived with the pizza. Bari handed over the required currency, and set about eating the aforementioned pizza. I'm getting very hungry just thinking about it. I really love pizza. But, I need to put that selfishness aside and relate to you what Baritone Juicebox thought and did as he ate that pizza, for many thoughts came to him, which spurred him on to a great number of actions, generally relevant to the plot of this saga.

Firstly, he offered some to the moustache, who thanked him but turned it down on the grounds that since he was a part of Bari now, they had a symbiotic relationship wherein he was able to garner sustenance from Bari, and needed not to consume on his own. Then, he bit into that first piece.

The first bite of a pizza is always the most satisfying. The initial taste of cheese and bread and sauce, along with toppings on the top, combined with the wonderful carbohydratory experience of the crust on the bottom makes for a truly delightful experience, and a unique one. As he ventured further towards the rear crust of the pizza, and so the mass of pizza that was outside of his body at the moment waned, and as the tree, satisfied that Bari was satisfied, made ready to fly off, Bari put to it a question:

"Oh, tree, would you be able to assist me in some very important matters?"

"Surely, Jim's Pancake House of Pizza and Oysters has many messenger trees in its service, certainly enough to keep business afloat. What is it that requires my aid?"

At this, Bari imparted upon the tree his tale, concluding with how he would like to find whatever parts of him were out there, and attempt to unify himself with them."

"Surely, tree, you are capable of inter-dimensional travel, and it would not be beyond your powers to help me scour those other dimensions."

"Of course I'll help. We'll begin when you finish that pizza."

And isn't that zany? For the first part of his adventure, he didn't have to wait very long to find himself. In fact, he encountered himself, some of his flark friends, and some of the other Bari's cloud porpoise friends within minutes of taking off from the surface of the moon upon the bark of that kindly tree. Now he knew surely that there were at least three parts of him meandering about the universes, for this one that he found was bereft of any traces of a moustache. Instantly he knew that this was the part of him that had wanted to die, and perhaps had died. Maybe he was now finding his own ghost. How spooky! But instead of contemplating what ifs individually, they set off to the surface of the moon to collectively attempt to ascertain the truth, and from there decide what was to be done with it.

Upon landing on the surface of the moon, the Bari with the moustache alighted from the tree, and Bari sans-moustache from the flark he was riding. They set a table in a crater, upon which they put whatever provisions they had on them, and swapped stories. Each Bari was incredulous at what he heard from the other, and could not believe that there existed a part of himself that could have undergone such fantastic adventures. Now, information being properly transferred, the main matter at hand was to decide what to do. It was agreed that they should be unified, but as to how that was to be done, they were both clueless. But the tree knew an oracle that lived out by Jim's Pancake House of Pizza and Oysters. Perhaps they could find him, invite him over to Jim's, and acquire various forms of information and advice.

Chapter XIII

Bari and Arthur gazed up from the base of Mount Hockey, but even if they had had the eyes of eagles, they would have been confounded in their efforts to view the summit.

"Well, I guess we have quite the climb ahead of us," Bari mentioned.

"Indeed, I wonder if it will end up as one of those long, uneventful walks that doesn't really require any explanation, or if it'll be action-packed. So packed with action that it bursts at its proverbial seams with action, and perhaps even adventure," reasoned Arthur.

"From the looks of things, it seems like a pretty mundane place. I can't really see anything happening on those slopes from here. This makes me think that we're in for an adventure of the thrilling variety. The mountain is kind of projecting this arrogant reverse psychology attitude, where it wants us to think it's boring so we're even more confounded when the action comes."

"Well then, let's get started."

And so the two comrades began to perambulate up the slopes of Mount Hockey. There was an obvious path, complete with signs marking the way which read "path." It almost seemed too easy.

"Perhaps this sign was put here to deceive us, for if there is enchantment enough to create a basketball hoop that has the power of transfiguration, then surely there can be magic enough to paint deceiving words upon wooden signs," Bari mused aloud.

"Perhaps, but there's no mistaking. This obviously has the look of a path, or at the very least, a trail, and I don't think that using a synonym would count as deceiving us, being that they essentially mean the same thing."

"You're correct in that right, and perhaps I should have framed my words with more caution. What I meant to say is that perhaps this path or trail, which to us seems so pleasant, is in fact treacherous and full of peril. At any rate I suppose we have no choice but to ascend by these means, as I see no other road leading upwards. We can only hope that while all roads may lead to Rome, this one stops at our basketball hoop en route to that famous city."

"It would seem that we have no choice but to carry on this way. What have we to lose? Until we find that hoop you're stuck a basketball and I am a roustabout with no future. Perhaps a bit of present, and a rather shaky past, but a future sounds quite appealing to me. And even if there was a choice, we should take the choice that says to ascend as opposed to the one which says to stay still. Just think of what we've endured up to this point. We've defeated the Mantiwhore, a whole gallimaufry of strange creatures, and won the challenge of the moustache's labyrinth, and thusly, these moustaches en route to where we are now. We ought to be reckoned famous adventurers by now, and no adventurer of any level of fame or obscurity, unless they be a false adventurer, would turn down the chance to climb this mountain. Indeed, we're the first to pass this way since that labyrinth was built. Surely curiosity has killed no cats. I've seen cats die of old age, disease, and many other things, but never curiosity. That's a concept, which has no literal power in our physical world. Now, onward!

And onwards they did tread. The path meandered gently up the course of the mountain, and the climb was indeed rather pleasant and uneventful. Out of boredom, Arthur suggested that they tell each other tales, and enjoy the entertainment that enters their entities in order to pass the time. Bari concurred that this was a novel idea, and Arthur encouraged him to go first. He chose to tell a tale that had been a favourite in the days of his youth. It had been contained with a volume amongst other stories of its kind, with no known author. This is it:

"Of the Gardyloo and the Gallimaufry and their fantastical Adventures amongst the Beeople of Thyradutc"

The Gardyloo was left-handed, as was the Gallimaufry. This night found them walking to the edge of a forest of psychedelic firs, in which there was a drainage pipe. Normally it would be transporting water, but tonight it was dry. It was well known to the students of the university on whose campus the drainage pipe resided, and which the Gardyloo and the Gallimaufry attended, that if one spent the night in that drainage pipe whilst it was dry, anything could happen. Now, most people didn't dare sleep there, for fear of something, let alone anything, happening. However, the Gardyloo and the Gallimaufry were driven by boredom and lust for adventure to see just what might happen.

It was the very beginning part of allergy season, and with tissues in hand in addition to half gallons of chocolate milk, they set out towards the drainage pipe I keep talking about. Laying their sleeping bags down, they began drinking their chocolate milk and conversing regarding topics such as things which had passed, things that were passing, and things that would pass. Quite a few footballs had passed, or had been passed, in the past. They also discussed what might come to pass, divided into the subcategories of that which they hoped might come to pass and that which they hoped would not come to pass. What-ifs and what might have beens were rather common topics, as were various absurd subgenres which that included absurd scenarios which would probably never come to pass but surely would be interesting if they did. At last, in the midst of night, sleep came to them and pushed their eyelids down, and they were unable to open them for several hours. In the meantime, they dreamed many fantastical dreams, both realizing that nothing interesting had happened to wake them up.

"How unfortunate," they both thought in their sleep.

Upon awakening, they were sorely disappointed.

"What a waste," said the Gallimaufry as he rose.

"Well," replied the Gardyloo, "maybe, though nothing happened, anything did happen. Perhaps nothing was anything. They never said it was mandated that the anything which might happen would be exciting."

"I suppose you're right. Well, let's head back to the mundane world which we never seemed to leave, and grab some breakfast."

"I heard the special at the cafeteria is pancakes, so hard that your teeth might break when you chew them, A delicacy for sure."

"Pancakes? Pancakes! I love pancakes! Let's go!"

And so they set off. But lo, and behold if you should also be so inclined to do so, they realized the instant they left the pipe that anything had happened for when they reach the edge, they realized they were on the edge of a precipice, so high that they could not see the ground below them.

"Well," said the Gallimaufry. "Surely anything did happen. Now let's check the other end of this pipe and hopefully that will not look down from the edge of another cliff. Indeed, the wish that the Gallimaufry had spoken aloud was the same one that the Gardyloo had thought, and it was fulfilled. Upon reaching the other end they could observe a spacious, pastoral meadow, with rolling hills covered in odd-looking monolithic flowers, punctuated by a vast forest, beyond which they could see nothing.

"There's nothing I can think of to do but explore. We don't have class for three days, and even so, I don't know how we'll ever get back. That pipe definitely isn't in the same place it was when we fell asleep. We might as well make use of this adventure. It was what we had asked for, in a sense."

So spoke the Gardyloo, and the Gallimaufry agreed wholeheartedly.

"Let's just walk around for a bit and hopefully we'll stumble upon something exciting. If not, we can just sleep in the pipe again. You know, the 'ole "the way out is the way in" philosophy that you see in the movies all the time."

At this they crawled out. The meadow, as far as they could see, was bereft of all but flora, but what odd plant life this was. Stranger even than the psychedelic firs of their own world. The flowers were all massive, at least twenty feet tall, and the trees which constituted the forest they saw were proportionally large to the flowers, when compared to the nature of size differentials between trees and flowers in our own world. Who knows what manner of massive creatures could thrive in this environment. Certainly nothing that could compare to the world they knew, at least nothing that had populated that world since its prehistoric days.

But how wrong that thought process was. In fact, the stream of consciousness would have to reverse direction in order for their thoughts to be verified, for much of what populated this world were miniscule beasts, many as ferocious as their counterparts in the world of the Gardyloo and the Gallimaufry, but many times smaller. They, of course, escaped their attention. One thing did not.

From far off in the distance they could hear a buzzing growing louder as time progressed, until the sky above them darkened as they wandered about. Then the cloud descended, and they thought they were in those moments living their last. It seemed a plague of biblical proportions. Alas, though, fortune favoured them and these were not carnivorous beings, but had descended from the skies to land in the flowers. Being that these beings seemed extremely distracted, the Gardyloo and the Gallimaufry decided to try and get a closer look.

Now, you'll surely think I'm making this up, because it's so fantastical, but what they beheld inside the flowers seemed to be a bee of human proportions, until it raised its head, which showed it to be a bee with a human head. Stranger still, it had four bee legs and two human arms. What would you do in this scenario? Would you trust in the herbivorous nature of its bee-body, or give deference to humanity's penchant for feasting upon flesh? They decided to trust in the bee part, as most humans don't eat other humans, they just rob them, and they had nothing worth stealing.

"So, who, or what are you, and where are we?" was what the Gallimaufry asked them.

"Well, you're in a place called Thyradutc. I'm not sure where it is in relation to that world you come from, but that drainage pipe is the only way to get here, and that operates solely on chance. As rare as it is for people to sleep there, it is even rarer still for this option to come up on the roulette wheel which is fate. As to what I am, you can see that my nature is partially that of a bee and partially that of a human. Thusly, our species is known as beeople, and we are singularly known as beeople. We're related somewhat closely to people, and distantly to sheeple, though not at all to steeple. If you'd like to learn more, I can take you to our leader, the May Bee, and maybe he can induce a little clarity to scatter your confusion, for I can tell that this situation has left you confounded.

The Gardyloo was the first to speak. "Yes, please take us. I'd love to see more of this world."

So, the Beeople led them to the edge of the forest, and down a path a bit, until they veered off that path and soon found themselves at a hive hanging from one of the more massive oaks.

"Go ahead, climb in," instructed the Beeople that had first talked to them, and they obeyed, and subsequently found themselves in a massive hall. It seemed to be the perfect balance of bee and human, with characteristics of the worlds of both. After a short walk, they came to a throne, on which was situated someone who could only be the May Bee, who showed a great amount of delight at their arrival.

"Why, it's been so long since we've entertained humans! Let a feast be prepared!"

And within minutes a feast was on the table, and both the May Bee and the Gardyloo/Gallimaufry parties were exchanging stories and news. The May Bee was especially curious to hear about what had transpired in the human world in the last twenty years, which was the last time a human had come to their world. The May Bee then gave them a detailed account of the history and nature of the Beeople, and before they had noticed, all the food and drink had been consumed. The May Bee exclaimed that while it was certainly nice to have visitors, they couldn't allow their work to be interrupted for too long, and bade them farewell and good luck. Just to make sure, the Gallimaufry asked if the way out was the way in, for they'd like to go back to their homes, having satisfied their curiosity, but not their desire for pancakes.

"Of course not," said the May Bee. "The way in is the way in. As for a way out, I'm afraid you'll have to find that yourself. I wouldn't worry, it's quite easy, if I do remember."

"Would you at least tell us where it is?"

"Maybe. No, no I can't . well, maybe I can...ABSOLUTELY NOT! Truth is, I don't know, but you do."

"We don't, that's why we asked."

"Whatever you say, it's up to you."

"Alright, let's go."

And so they departed, realizing that they way out was whatever they wanted it to be, and so they made it a pancake.

"What a fun adventure that was," said the Gardyloo when they got back.

"Indeed, it was like a nice walk in the woods, only we got to meet some new friends and explore a world that nobody's seen in a while. High fives all around!"

The story ends here

"Well," said Arthur. That was a pleasant story. Normally we like to hear stories all full of action and excitement. That one had a little tension, but it was resolved by means of proper inquiries. I really didn't mind at all hearing about some people having a nice day."

By this point, they had climbed a bit, though they were still walking in the forest. Arthur continued

"Bari, do you think there really are Beeople out there?"

"No, probably not. I think it's a completely fictional story, but you never know what can be real. Just look at what we've endured since we've left our homes."

Then they heard a loud crashing sound, like something bounding through the woods, which indeed it was. That something had perfect timing, and allowed Bari to finish that last sentence, and then arrived. Immediately thereafter, when he arrived, our protagonists saw a man clad in athletic shorts, with a scuba suit under them, and an oxygen tank on his back and mask on his face. Next to the oxygen tank was a parachute. Upon his belt there were many items, mostly ones that would be used in extreme scenarios. Pinned to his breast was a nametag that read, "hi, my name is Action."

"Hi, my name is Action," said the man who they had already discerned to be named Action. "I heard you were looking for me."

"Why, we had been," said Arthur. "But I realized a few minutes ago that I wouldn't mind a nice, pleasant walk to the top of this mountain. I have some sports to accomplish, you see."

"It's too late for that!" exclaimed Action. "Action is here. And if my twin brother, Adventure, wasn't jumping out of a helicopter on a skateboard into an active volcano, where he plans on parasailing, while drinking an energy drink, he'd be here too. Hell, I'd like to join him. But alas, you called for me. So, what can I do for you?"

"Let us walk to the top of this mountain, please. If you have any advice, you're welcome to dispense it." Arthur replied.

"It's too late for a peaceful walk. Action is here! I know where we can have a shootout with some cops! Or some high surfaces we can jump off of and onto lower surfaces!"

This was quickly becoming annoying, much like the wolf-man that had wanted to excise a tax upon them. Luckily, our heroes were quick thinkers, and Bari gave Action some good advice.

"Well, why don't we go join your brother in EXTREME deportes, but without the us portion of the we whole. Us, of course, being my friend and I."

"Great idea, let's do it!"

Off he bounded through the woods, and the two of them heaved sighs of relief when his last footsteps died away in the distance.

"Your turn to tell a story," said Bari, making it very clear that it would be best to avoid mentioning the topic of what they had just experienced. He was pretty annoyed at this point.

"Yes, now that Action is gone and there is no threat of Adventure finding his way here, let us perambulate upwards towards this venerable summit, and I will tell you a tale, which though brief, contains many truths, albeit possibly mixed with several half-truths and perhaps many more outright falsehoods."

"Toozday"

"Oh hey, it's Toozday!"

This was the thought of one Arnold Svarthron, who sported an unnaturally large beard.

"Has Toozday come so soon?" descried he of the sideburns, who would one day grow the hair atop his head into the style of a pompadour, who shall be hereafter referred to as Ignatius, with the given surname of Surname.

Toozday was a special day for Arnold Svarthron and Ignatius Surname, for it appeared on no calendar, but inserted itself whenever it should so desire. On average this occurred every other year, but oftentimes it would come more often, or less frequently, or less often, or more frequently. People could descry the coming of Toozday as the night threw her yoke off the planet and let the day reign for its allotted period of time. As the day dawned on a Toozday, the sun rose in a greenish splendor, and resumed its normal colouration upon seating itself upon its throne at the zenith of its course through the sky. All day you could tell what sort of mood each visible celestial body was in, for on Toozday they hid not their faces beneath their surfaces, but let them rise to the surface, and indeed far above it.

And though objects are always wont to be transfigured, as you were, Bari, on Toozday it occurred with a drastically increased frequency. Of course, most usually returned to their former shape without a great labour such as we have undertaken before the next day dawns. And though not all do so, the vast minority which retain their newest shape often do so of their own volition, because they prefer the new shape, and do not mind waiting for Toozday to come once more to return to their former selves. So dissatisfied with their circumstances are many humans. It's most unfortunate, I believe. And hey, wouldn't it be cool if people liked their lives? Maybe someday more cause will come. More cause than a simple Toozday. But for now Toozday reigned supreme. It was always a celebrated holiday. So many people's thoughts revolved around

"Hey, I hope Toozday comes so that maybe I'll transform into something else and not have to go to this stupid job."

Or

"Hey, I hope Toozday comes so that maybe I'll transform into something else and not have to go to this stupid class."

Mainly the hope for Toozday was a sort of escapism. It was something to hope for, because a transfiguration got you out of your normal life. And when Toozday came, even if you stayed the same shape, you still got out of your normal routine for a day. This is because when Toozday came, everyone observed it. Nobody bothered to go to work or to school. Nobody bothered to call out either. Everyone knew it was Toozday and being Toozday, there was no need to attend these normally required functions. But it was so much more than a day off. For many people, it was the hope for a new start. The new start that they were afraid to make for themselves, and relied on a silly calendar day to accomplish. So, he of the beard and he of the sideburns simply noticed that Toozday had come, and marked the day with joy. They hoped not for a transfiguration. They were pretty satisfied with their lives. They had shaved their arm hair upon the last full moon and planted it and seen what had grown. And what had grown gave them a pretty good idea of what was to come for them, and they liked it. Liked it enough to rejoice. And rejoiced enough to have cake. And so when Toozday came it was celebrated simply with snacks. Neither bothered to show up to work. Why bother? Nobody else would be there. And if nobody was there, who would they celebrate with? Instead, they chose to go to the local sports field, where sports were wont to occur. And sports were always a cause for celebration. Celebration was the nature of the day. Sports is celebration! I sense a connection! Let's sports!

And so sports they did! They put on their very own athletic shorts and jerseys and headed down to the field. There, they met other people similarly attired, who also desired to sports with them. And so they sportsed. But poor Arnold and Ignatius were so unfortunate as to be given a task. Now, when given a task, one does not have to accept it. But does one dare to turn down such a chance to shine? Especially on a day such as this, which is so celebrated? No, of course not! One must be sports when the chance arises! And so they had been chosen by Toozday itself to engage the most sports of sports, which was a game of sports.

But something else came up. Something that made it not seem so important to Arthur to finish telling this story. All in all, the story didn't matter. It had been a diversion. A way to pass the time while they were on a pleasant walk. The pleasant walk was over. There were much more pressing issues happening at hand. A dark figure descended from the sky, enshrouding everything in absolute darkness, and looking extremely intimidating in the process. In the pitch black, the only thing which could be discerned was a small name tag which stated

"Hi, my name is Danger."

And a small sub-text beneath which read

"Hola, mi nombre es Peligroso."

Bari was angry because he had wanted to hear out the rest of Arthur's story, while Arthur was upset about being interrupted. Neither really enjoyed the fact that the present situation seemed so dangerous.

"I guess we're in danger," said Bari.

The dark figure at once revealed that he had both a voice as non-threatening as his figure appeared threatening and showed that he possessed a penchant for terrible puns when he uttered forth the following lines in a high-pitched, cartoonish voice:

"Well, you're not in danger yet, just in front of him. But I'm sure I could arrange it in my busy schedule to devour you both!"

It was then that our protagonists came to a startling revelation.

"Of course!" exclaimed Arthur. "We're young. We can't take Danger seriously!"

And so they laughed at him, they laughed at Danger himself, and their laughter lit up the darkness, and they meandered on their ways, laughing at Danger as they walked by him.

On their merry lil' ways they went, and on his own merry lil' way another form of Baritone Juicebox went from the moon to the Earth.
Chapter XIV

There is a game that many people like to play. In it, they take one ball and put it under a cup. They also have two cups, neither of which has a ball under it. They then take the cups and mix them around. The other person involved in the game needs to guess what cup the ball is under when the cups are done being mixed around. Now, imagine that each cup is in a sense a universe in which Baritone Juicebox has come to exist. Each is being mixed around, and but the ball is, in a sense, the universe in which they all coexist. Somewhere out in space someone is playing this game, and some poor soul is forced to guess what the outcome of all this mixing will be. Ignoring that poor soul, this was the outcome of the game:

The cups go round and round, and finally stop. But the guy running the game has mixed up, he spills the cups! Two of the universes in which Bari exists had already intertwined because of magic, and now each one fully spilled over into the other. They all lived in the same universe, though two of them were together, and one was far away, attempting to climb Mount Hockey.

As they took off from the moon, they had come to the conclusion that it would be best to forgo visiting Jim's and to just head to the Earth, and attempt to find Bari. The other Baris were too anxious to find out if there were any more of them in existence. They knew there were, but it was a matter of finding them. And they just felt that something had happened, which had put them all in the same universe. All they had to do was find each other. A simple mission at least, if not an easy one. So, there was no need to waste their time on mystics and other theories which may or may not even be valid.

And so this short-lived fellowship parted ways, with much less resignation than one might expect at such a parting. Alas, each party had much more at stake, many more important things to occupy the space of their minds, which was indeed finite, and could not be wasted on unnecessary resignation. The messenger tree had its work to attend to, the Flarks were attempting to establish themselves as respectable guardians of peace and justice throughout the universe, and the two Baritones were engaged in the actions which we've spent most of the ink on these pages discussing. Everyone headed where they needed to, and the two Baris, still amazed at their paths having crossed, took a couple moments before they made yet another jump.

With their wits collected, and their determination much higher, and with a much more respectable goal in mind, Bari and Bari leapt into space.

To describe the experience of swimming through space is a difficult task. Very difficult it indeed is to relate, but attempt I shall, for I know that if I can properly convey that feeling, I'm sure I can make many of you desire to try it, and in doing so better your lives. The near-vacuum is cold, but refreshing, like immersing oneself in the refreshing lemonade you drink on a hot summer day. In this though there is no liquid to physically revitalize their collective epidermises. And the lack of air, oh, that precious lack of air! It makes one appreciate fully their next breath, and every subsequent one, when they arrive in an atmosphere, which is something akin to reaching the surface after a long submergence.

This was, of course, the first time any form of Baritone Juicebox was successful in any attempt at swimming without any sort of aid, and it would also be far from his last. I say this for two reasons, with neither being the foremost one. Firstly, it implies that through all the tribulations Bari endured throughout the course of his adventures, he was very successful in the self-improvement category, and equally successful in the learning to swim sub-category. Secondly, I said that in order to relieve any sort of suspense or apprehensions you might have had about whether or not Baritone Juicebox would be alive come the end of this novel. I have too much affection for him to kill him off. I realize I've put him through some pretty awful trials, but that mostly stems from my desire for him to grow as a person, as I've heard and experienced that difficult times will indeed do that to one. The only thing left now was to see whether or not all, if any, or the Baris would accomplish what they set out to do.

To give a relative timeframe, the two Baris that had left from the moon landed on Earth around the time that the Bari that was a basketball and his friend Arthur Crouton were in the labyrinth and on their second challenge. This reminds me of something else. I've generally been pretty terrible with timeframes. I've given no thought to the passage of time, and so far as you know, all my characters have constantly been marching, with nary a break in the action to sleep or eat. Well, even the stamina of basketballs is not infinite, that is to say it is finite, which is to say that it has what the Spanish call a "fin" and the English an end. Sorry for any misapprehensions you might have had.

Now, it so chanced, and perhaps, I contrived it to be so, that where the two Baris landed was not far removed from the whereabouts of Mount Hockey on a map. In fact, if they and the Bari/Arthur team ascended from either side at similar speeds, they would converge upon the summit within minutes of each other, like so...

Please pay no attention to the proportions in that drawing. Please take into consideration that all three Baris are the same height, and are not so tall relative to the mountain. Now, betwixt the spot where Bari and Bari had landed there lay a sylvan scene, where a winding road wound 'round an arboreal landscape comparable with the Arcadia of days which had long passed. A paradise of natural creation. Since, up to a certain point, all three Baris shared a common memory, two of them, those being the two we were just discussing, began discussing a time and place that the scene reminded them of.

Surely, that too was quite the sylvan scene, but was contained within a much more minute diorama. As a teenager, Bari, as one person, had spent countless hours meandering by a river which lay across a bridge just a few minutes' walk from the place which he called home at the time. Oftentimes he would walk by this spot in the winter, passing by every day in eager anticipation of when spring would bestow its greenery and leaves upon the countenances of the local flora. One year, it was the year of his high school graduation, and the day was the fourteenth of March, the eve of the ides, which is written shorthand has 3/14 and thusly resembles the beginning of pi, and he went for a walk in the very spot of which we now find ourselves discussing. He ate a popsicle. It was lime-flavoured. Certainly not related to pi or pie in any way, but pi and pie aren't related, except that pies, being round, can use pi to find various dimensions. Though delicious, it was not the food he consumed that kept him satisfied, it was the company he kept, and while the popsicle satiated an ephemeral appetite, it was this company that satisfied something deeper, and gave him the satisfaction of feeling that he was, for once, living. Having generally been of a somewhat antisocial disposition, this had been a wonderful change for him. His meanderings tended to be of the solitary variety, but to walk the earth with others was certainly wonderful. He would later rediscover this fact as he walked with  
Arthur, but for now his mind was stuck in a rut. Funny it seemed to him that within months of this he was upon the roof of a museum, or was it in some wilderness, he could not remember, for his mind had been overgrown by vines, he stood before the alligator, and beseeched that it give him clarity. But for all the utensils stuck in the flesh of this aquatic reptile, and its reputation for telling the truth, or the future, or various intertwinings of the two, not one shred of clarity would dare enter his juvenile mind. Within mere months he had lost so much of what he had held dear. He had moved far away, and geography had taken its toll, the distance creating mental distance that no amount of letters could bridge. He was far away from the world he knew, and though he was discovering new, great worlds, he would always miss that one. And so now, both of our protagonists, both of the Juicebox variety, saw now a desolate forest, more suited to their current state of mind than the one in which they had discovered it. And so they found as they perambulated that the forest would shift what it was to suit their moods, and this became ever more desolate as they remembered more of what had led them to the forest which they had so recently been discussing.

But surely there was some memory held within their collective consciousness which could relieve their current sardonic state. Oh! There were plenty! But, behold! They, without fail, resolved themselves into the recollection of an event which had led him to attempt suicide in the first place. And finally, they saw naught but the moonscape from which they had once sought release from their mortal coils, and felt that that choice was once more lying before them.

"What should prevent us from doing it again," said the Bari that did not possess a moustache.

How foolish these two were. How focused on their own misery, and so focused on it that it pervaded their very environment. Bari had never thought of himself as a selfish person, but here he was, in two forms, emanating despair about him, and forcing it on his surroundings without taking notice of the ill being done to them. This must be corrected!

"This must be corrected!" he shouted. Thinking of the Bari that also had a moustache who was currently struggling towards something better dissuaded him from the deed which would end with him dead, and persuaded him towards the deed which would end with a wonderful beginning. For that part of him it was at least worth walking through some woods and climbing a mountain and hoping to meet himself on the way, or at the very least, catch some glimpse of himself from the top. And with the lesson in mind that this part of the world was what they made of it, or at the very least, what they thought of it, they traipsed through the woods, ever onward through an abundance of arbors that was growing ever greener as they thought more positive thoughts. In due time, they were merely strolling through a rustic scene, and the positive thoughts even paid off in the form of a plentitude of pizza plants perpetually blooming. Of these they duly fed themselves to the point where they were borderline gorging. And speaking of gorging, they came to the brink of a precipice which overlooked a gorge, and almost unknowingly fell in, so occupied were they with the pizza which flowered upon the sides of the path, and so engaged were they in the discussions they were having with the friendly woodland creatures which had replaced the menacing monsters which had lurked in the shadows of the previous minutes.

At some point in your life, I'm sure you've seen a film where there is some point in the path of the characters are treading, where there is some form of gap to cross, be it gorge, ravine, some manner of plateaus placed apart, or something else, and the only thing bridging the aforementioned gap is a flimsy-seeming rope bridge, which generally starts giving way as the last character is crossing. The last character must starting running full speed or else swing on the bridge as it falls away towards the other side, then grab the edge and climb up. There was such a bridge here, but they walked over it without any sort of hindrance. In fact, nothing really intruded upon their path. Unbeknownst to them, they had found themselves on the easy side of the mountain, which rested upon a silver platter, and where the grass was always greener than any green grass elsewhere in the world. Once they reached the interior of the forest, it didn't even matter what they thought, for this part was of a climate that found itself permanently in springtime, constantly in bloom, with the sun warming every inch of the ground with the love it bestowed with its tender smile.

Now, whilst these two Baris were perambulating peacefully, Bari and Arthur were struggling up the steepest slope either of them had ever stumbled up. They had left behind the place where all the obstacles were merely personified concepts, and were now climbing a rocky slope. As they clambered up the cliff, a cavalcade of coniferous plants fell from above and with them a multitude of rocks, obscuring what little path existed. But, eventually, the emerged triumphant, standing upon a platform upon a plateau, with a sign held in the air by a plat's toe, letting know that they were but a short distance from the summit.

And then tragedy struck, and this is how: comparable to the quantity of romantic comedies I've seen is the number of sports movies I've seen. I've realized that I have indeed mentioned sports quite a bit, and as much as I might want to experiment, stories involving sports must stay within certain parameters. So, towards the beginning the athlete or team struggles, but is rescued by fate taking the form of a new star player (oftentimes an animal) or a celebrity coach. They cruise through the rest of the season and qualify for the playoffs, and make the championship game, albeit not without difficulty. Then, before or during the championship game some sort of tragedy strikes, creating an obstacle that must be overcome. Oftentimes they pool their collective energies and overcome the aforementioned obstacle, and in doing so, win the championship game, often on a point scored as time expires. Less frequently, they try their hardest, but despite their efforts, by some degree of providence, or more earthly powers such as chance or just being outplayed, they end up losing, but in losing learn a valuable lesson. In that case, there is often a sequel in which they do win the championship. Of course, now you know the two options for how this book will end.

Baritone Juicebox knew the formula from vicarious experience. In his lifetime, he had never managed to make a sports team, but had devoted much of his time to watching sports and sports movies. Arthur, as we have seen, made his school's basketball team, though he was merely a mediocre player. Fortunately he was mediocre enough to be the last one picked, and not the first one not picked. As we recall, he had once won a championship for his team, albeit on false pretenses. Nonetheless he possessed a championship ring, and that entitled him to certain views on sports, certain opinions and concepts on which he could considered to be a legitimate authority.

Being that they both possessed a decent amount of sports acumen, they weren't overly surprised when Arthur broke the arm with which he would normally shoot his foul shots. It went like this: as they clambered up, it passed that a couple trees which flowered with popsicles dropped their fruit. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. Popsicles are generally regarded as harmless and are oftentimes healthy. But! But! The word but indicates something adverse to what I was saying. And adverse this next sentence shall be! But, popsicles have a malevolent cousin known as pop-sickles, which are in fact quite dangerous to anyone or anything which happens to cross their path. Pop-sickles, unlike popsicles, were named after their main excuse for existence. A pop-sickle is a sickle that grows upon the same tree as most varieties of popsicle, and when it ripens, it pops, and in doing so falls upon whatever gravity indicates that it should fall upon. The pop releases a noxious fume that is nauseating to those few who are forced to smell it, which nobody has ever done before of their own volition. One of these trees, growing mainly popsicles, but also one pop-sickle, grew on an overhang over the summit of the mountain, and ripened just as Arthur was under it. By the time the pop reached his ears, it was too late. He looked up and began to run, but the pop-sickle caught his shoulder, fracturing the bones within. There was absolutely no hope of it healing before they reached the top. This was the obstacle that must be overcome.

As far as they knew, there were no medics on the mountain, and medics were one of the few things they had yet to encounter growing on their trip, and even so, a broken arm could only really be healed by time. Sure, they could wait for it to heal and then try the shot, but who knows if they could survive on the mountain for those few weeks. They had been lucky so far in finding food, but if they were stationary for any amount of time there was a decent chance that they might become food for some creature they had not seen or imagined yet. So, all they could do was set a rudimentary cast and continue on. What remained of the path wasn't too difficult. It was what lay at the top that intimidated them. They had passed through the dangerous, action-packed forests. The rest of their path was comparable to the path on the easy side where the grass was greener that Bari and Bari were currently taking.

What a clever transition! Instead of further discussion of the process involving the transition, I'm just going to claim that I'm clever and continue on with my plotline. Bari (moustache) and Bari (sans-moustache) Juicebox were taking a leisurely stroll. By this point, they had almost forgotten why they were climbing, other than that they found the exercise to feel rewarding and the fresh air to feel refreshing. What a shock it was for them when they reached the top!

The Bari/Arthur team had reached the top before the Bari/Bari team, though the Bari/Bari team was awfully close behind. They weren't racing though. Current events just happened to call for the giving of this particular time frame. It's important, believe me. See, when they reached the summit, Bari and Arthur found it barren, save for a massive monolithic monument to the creator and savior of the sport, the ancient legend Jamesnaismith. It seemed a hoax! There was no basketball court, not even a single hoop could be discerned from where they stood, and from where they stood, they could see the whole of the summit, which was flat and barren. Yet they still wanted to believe. They had come all this way, it couldn't have been all for a joke. Maybe there was a code or a password or something? That monument had to mean something. They knew its visage represented he who had invented the sport of basketball. Perhaps there was some sort of symbolism in that? What could they say to bring out the hoop that they hoped for?

"Oh," said Arthur, "How could I have missed this?"

That is what he said as he reached out to ring a little bell that lay on the ground, next to a sign that was scrawled into the earth and which read

"ring bell for service."

In an instant, there emerged five monks of the ancient order of basketball, clothed in naught but their ceremonial robes. Give me a moment and I'll redefine robes, as they see them. Go!

Athletic shorts! Jersey! Basketball sneakers! Socks which matched both the shorts and the jersey! Done!

"Who is it that summons us?" inquired the one who seemed to be the leader of the monks.

"It is Arthur Crouton," who wishes to overcome all and to make a single foul shot and in doing so, aid in setting two lives aright.

"Poor soul," said the monk behind the first one who had spoken.

"He only knows of the old rules, which changed thousands of years old. Funny that someone so young would possess such outdated information. Well, sir, the rules have since changed."

"Let me chime in," said the third. "Once upon a time you could make a foul shot and be granted a wish. If you were a human-turned-basketball, you could become human again. But times have changed."

"No!" was what Bari cried. "Don't tell me that we came all this way for nothing. Has this place lost its magic. What's happened?"

"Let me put my proverbial two cents in," spoke the fourth monk. "I'll explain. Because we are guardians to this most sacred shrine to the ancient art of basketball, and we've grown bored with the whole foul shot system, and sought a more active lifestyle, we changed the rules."

"Indeed," concluded the fifth and final monk. "The new rule is that you must beat us in a five on five game of basketball, where the first team to score a basket immediately wins. As it stands, there are only two of you, and one of you is the game ball, which must be shot in by someone on your team in order for you to once again become human. As of now, you don't even qualify to play."

It was at this moment that Bari and Bari came sauntering up the hill, and saw themselves for the first time in a long time. In fact, until he was about seventeen, Bari had always been too afraid to really see himself, and after that he was still pretty tentative. One day that would change, which would be for the better, and that day might just be the one I'm recording right now. Of course, the two Baris that had just conquered the mountain knew their basketball counterpart, though he had lost his former shape. After all, a Juicebox is always a Juicebox. The instant they mounted the hill, they, like all else who achieved that elusive task, found themselves clothed for a game of basketball. But the team was still two players short.

This is why the concept of the convenient plot twist was invented. Within moments of each other, two significant events occurred.

One: one of the monks stated a rule that when a human-turned-basketball which once again sought humanity was involved, the monks would have to sit out one player to compensate.

Two: a clown, clothed in basketball apparel, in the colour of Bari, Bari, and Arthur's team, appeared. It was game time.

Chapter XV

Before them appeared every character that has so far appeared in this story, arranged by side. If they had appeared to give aid to Bari's cause, they sat in a satin set of bleachers on one side of the court. Those who existed to hinder any of his purposes sat on the other side of the court, leering and bathed in fire, a fire which did not harm them, for it emanated from within them. It was the fire of their hatred for all that was Baritone Juicebox. The referee was an ibex-human hybrid, who really didn't even care about basketball. In fact, he was only in this position because I required him to be so. His apathy towards the sport made him the most impartial referee one could find.

Arrayed in athletic monk robes were the four guardians of the mountain. Clothed in the same garb, but of a differing colour, were the clown, the two Baris and Arthur. The basketball Bari was the game ball. The rules were as such: whoever scored first would win. There were no time limits, nor were there fouls. All sorts of magic and mischief could be applied. This went far beyond the normal rules of standard basketball, but this was a magical place. A matter of life and death it was not. A matter of future and pride it was.

The ball was tossed, and the monks received it. Oh, how they could have won so quickly. Monk number one threw up a quick jump shot, and basketball Bari quivered as he flew through the crisp mountain air, fearing that he would go in and be the ultimate demise of his friends, and of the various incarnations of himself that were now competing for his future. He struck the rim, and rolled around it three times, in ever slower motion as it seemed like the shot would go in, but fell down into the hands of the clown, who took that rebound and passed it to Arthur, who hoped to make another miraculous shot in order to set his future path in the direction that he desired it to go, but also to help Bari, who had become his dearest friend. Despite his pure intentions, but maybe because he was distracted by the thoughts of how to best phrase his wish if the ball went in, the shot he threw up faltered. The process of both teams missing shots was repeated pretty often. In fact, I'm actually just going to skip to the end of the game. I just don't have it in me to record the bulk of the match, which lasted a full week, without breaks. It set all sorts of records, but mostly for time played to points scored ratio. The bulk of that week consisted mostly of the teams' running back and forth, each missing shots, due both to excellent defense, weariness, and an array of pranks that each team played on the other and distractions that they prepared.

The pranks and distractions were probably the most interesting part. In these, the monks had enlisted the help of Milenkoooooo, who had long been waiting for a chance to get back at Bari, and whose only strength was generally the playing of pranks. At the monks he shouted ideas which only they could hear. These included gluing the ball to Arthur's hand when he went to shoot, but making the glue's hold falter when one of the monk's went to grab the ball and run down the court the opposite way; and conjuring winds and storms that took effect only when someone on Bari's team shot the ball. One time they even got a thunder god to help, who made the thunder rumble so loudly that the sound waves pushed Bari back away from the hoop after another Bari had shot him. All sorts of mythological beasts they conjured, many of them who Bari had encountered earlier in his escapades. Oh, the Mantiwhore and the rhymaera helped, as did the trees of the ill-tempered enchanted forests.

On Bari's side, the paper planes of the Paper Plains tried to help, carrying Bari on his way towards the hoop, but always being blocked. The moustache shouted encouragement while wearing his coaching outfit. The cloud porpoises conjured helping clouds to give helping hands and the Flarks flapped their shark wings to create positive breezes, but these were all effectively countered by the monks. Occasionally they'd be given banana peels to throw on the ground and make the monks slip when a surefire slam dunk seemed ready to occur. All this went on for a week.

Now, you know that the game is about to end. Place your bets accordingly. Do you think Bari and his cohorts will emerge victorious? Do you think all his trials will amount in the end to a win, from which everything he desired would be accomplished? Or maybe he'll lose, but still learn a valuable moral lesson.

Tired and starving, neither sided cared much for moral lessons. The monks kind of wished they had stuck with the foul shot idea. If it hadn't been for sheer stubbornness, either side would have given up and forfeited the game. They were practically crawling across the court by this point, tossing shots up haphazardly. Clouds of natural sources had filled the sky and snow was now falling in near-blizzard form. Any of them by now would have had trouble discerning whether or not the ball they shot had in fact went in the hoop. "Nothin' but net" meant nothing. Nothing meant anything. Sheer desperation was all that led these players. That and pride. Though, a pride of lions could have eaten them and each one of the players would have viewed that as a fitting end, as a nice release from the suffering they were now enduring.

Alas! A lass! A lasso! Oh! A shot came ever-so-close. It was a shot that is normally named a slam dunk, and this is how it happened. With the last bit of strength left within him, monk number three leapt up. This was the last jump he would be capable of for months afterward, so much energy did it take. Upwards he leapt, above the defenders who now stood defenseless on the ground, and his arm moved forward, bring the ball closer and closer to entering the net. Bari quaked in his hands. How he did not want to go in that net, not from these hands! So hard did he slam that Bari flew back into the atmosphere, and remembered the first time he had fallen as a basketball, and hoped with all the might within him that he would not go in the hoop. As he reached the zenith of his flight, he was distracted by a passing flock of airplane birds, who have the bodies of airplanes and may carry passengers at times, but have wings of feather and bone, and flap them to move, and can reach massive sizes. They frightened him not, for they were merely migrating, not hunting, and he sat there in the air watching them, forgetting that he was supposed to fall down.

As he did this, another basketball that had once been human fell from the sky and landed in the net. This aroused a bit of celebration from the monks. Bari was brought back to reality by the sounds of cheering below him, and the weeping of his friends.

"What could have brought this on?" he thought as he once more fell. And as he fell he saw there was a basketball being hoisted up by the monks, and that basketball was soon knocked out of the monk's hand by Bari falling down onto it. Turns out that basketball had falsely scored a point. It was the destiny of all humans that became basketballs at some point in their lifetimes.

A moment of mass confusion ensued. The monks realized that the ball they held was not Bari. In their weariness they couldn't tell any basketballs apart from each other. Each one looked the same, as did even the most unique snowflakes which still fell. But now everyone on the court scrambled for the basketball with the moustache, and it was Arthur who picked it up with his good arm, and heaved it with all the desperation of someone who was trying to throw the world's strongest atom bomb far enough away from him that the wind would not be able to carry the radiation upon its back close enough to effect the thrower. So hard did he throw Bari that from the opposite end of the court he hit the backboard, and bounced back to about the foul line of the side it had been thrown from, and was scooped up by monk number four. This monk lifted up his arms, and with a simple jump shot, ended the game. The net swished as Bari fell with horror through it. All was silent. All was still. It felt as if the universe had ceased to exist, that they were in the silence that existed before anything was created or in the quiet that had ensued once all had been destroyed. All Baris simultaneously sunk down in disappointment. Could all these travails have been in vain? I refuse to believe it! And so did they! But no plea could have been to any avail. The rules were set. The basket was scored. The game over, part of Baritone Juicebox would always remain a basketball. The four members of that team, along with basketball Bari, came together and embraced. The monks came over to console them, but for such disappointment there was no consolation.

Was this all bad? Fortunately, the answer to that question is no. in all negatives, there is always, without fail, something positive to be found. I refuse to believe otherwise. This is why: part of Baritone Juicebox had always been sports. He was sports. He was a sports. A sports he was, and should remain. It was an essential part of his nature. This realization came rushing over him. He had to accept that part of him was destined to be a basketball, to be an embodiment of the sports he had always so admired. Otherwise he never would have become one in the first place. He had to have had it in him in order for it to happen in the first place. Perhaps deep in his soul, there had always been a basketball waiting to emerge from the shadows. Something like that should never be transfigured to human form. When his being split apart, the part of him that was sports merely manifested itself. Maybe it'd become a baseball or a football or a hockey puck, or maybe even a bowling ball. Even if it was a badminton birdie, that part of him was to remain representative of the nature of his soul which was sports, and sports is indeed an adjective, I will have you know. In fact, what became more important to him, having united with the other parts of himself in the sense of having met himself and being in one place, was uniting with them literally. He missed those guys, and all the times they had had. Those were some good days indeed. Surely, if they could just once again become one, the future would be pretty grand indeed. They had had some great adventures apart from each other, but those adventures had all been for the sake of reuniting, after which even more wondrous, magical adventures could be had. They'd all come quite a way from being the man that had tried to extinguish his life from the surface of the moon. Become one with himself he would. In fact, it wasn't all that hard. There was a lesson that he had learned long ago. It circumvented all magic and mystical assistance. Sure, that had all led to some fun times, but if he wanted to become one with himself, there was only one actual way to do it. And that was to just do it. And do it he did. The three Baris were one, encaged in their original shell, with a moustache compounded from the two of the three that had had moustaches.

As for Arthur, he too had an epiphany: he couldn't find the life he had wanted merely by winning a basketball game. Winning basketball games had never accomplished anything for him. He couldn't get what he wanted merely from being granted wishes. Surely those could help, but in the end what was necessary was that he find what he truly wanted and strive to attain it. What mattered most was that he had finally found a real friend, and despite the loss of his family, he had somebody that would be there for him throughout all his trials. Him and Bari would be hereafter inseparable, and would surely share in many future adventures, as well as future relaxing days sipping chocolate milk while sitting on a front porch somewhere and singing songs of all they had done, as well as songs about chocolate milk and songs about the front porch, and about everything, and some about nothing. Point is, they would live out the lives they wanted. That had been their goal all the time, and it took all this to show them just how easy it would be.

Plus, he had choices. He had travelled the world, and he had made acquaintances all over its surface. Surely, he had no relatives left, but he had found a set of people and creatures that would all play those roles. In the wake of everything, he would find a new start. Should he decide, he would be welcome amongst the cloud porpoises, with the flarks, or even amongst the basketball monks of Mount Hockey, for they realized that his talents had developed to the point where they could be considered "up there" with theirs. The future was open, and he had time, abilities, friends, and purpose.

Baritone Juicebox, as well, would not return to his family, at least not yet. He had heard from a cloud porpoise after the game that they had been brought safely up to the clouds, and there were being allowed to live their lives amongst them, apart from the savage humans which ravaged the lands below. World War 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971 had taken its toll on all of civilization, but the humans that were willing to leave with the cloud porpoises and not just destroy the clouds were being welcomed amongst their ranks, with full accommodations and sweaters. Knowing that all was well, Bari wished to travel back through some of the lands he had seen, and some that he had not seen, this time in the form of a relaxing vacation. He would eat all the pizza he wanted, but as a treat, and not a necessity for survival. The lands they had travelled were mostly rural and unexplored, and he feared not the effects of World War 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971. He'd be far from the battlefields where the battles had raged so recently.

The monks had no arrogant feelings regarding the outcome of the game. It had been played well and played fairly, and that was all that they asked from their competitors. Though they had lost, they were deemed quite worthy to play them anytime, even if there was to be nothing at stake the next time. They knew that the future was bright for our protagonists, all of them, though not bright to the point of blinding. They'd live out some nice lives though, and do a bit of good in their allotted time.

Bari and Arthur were liberated from the past. Their adventures had brought them quite far from those days were they were hopelessly trudging about the planet. They'd look back fondly on all that had passed, but never would they be absorbed by it. Memories were not reality, they realized. They were nice to think about, but the best times were the ones that were happening and the ones that were yet to happen. Yeah, things were looking pretty good. They all had their temporary trial versions of immortality, and those expiration dates showed no signs of approaching. The monks retired back to their dens to rest. What should they do now? What could one do in the wake of such adventures? Should it be something comparable to the adventures? Something to show them up? Or should they just cool down and rest? The answer to that was pretty simple. Though elated, our protagonists were still exhausted, and thirsty. They'd go and get some chocolate milk,

