To the starship Milwaukee

"I'm page 13," said Page 15, who had a lot of hang-ups. Also, everyone was sitting on him, both literally and metaphorically, which was confusing. "You are the metaphoricity of your own metaphor," explained Antiplautus, drawing suspicion on himself. "How did you know that?" asked Arthur. "I didn't" — so triumphantly Antiplautus — "How did you know?"

    Hannibal moved on the face of the waters. Which was probably because he was in a canoe. "Vote for me!" he said. The metaphors voted with their feet. They elected the moo-cow. "Grass for all!" the cow said, floating. Its objective correlative didn't because it wasn't on Page 13.

It was time for the narrator to interpose himself (or herself) into the dialogue. There was too much of it (and the dialogue). It had to be stopped. Hannibal realised that a machine-gun was not enough. He dived out of the room (which was octagonal as well as pink), clutching Mr T as he went. Theodora and Arthur exited swiftly through the trapdoor. Then the grenades flew, as well as the Howitzers. Thus was the room destroyed.

The four remaining characters found themselves aboard the starship Milwaukee. Arthur commanded that the ship head for the planet Cheesecake; Mr T pointed out, however, that the engines couldn't take any more — or the ship would, apparently, blow.

A new plotline had been opened up, and the crew members looked forward to exploring new civilizations and destroying them — all without a single piece of dialogue.

Page 14

PAGE
14

(Don't say I didn't warn you — 'cos I didn't.)

Election Mania

    Antiplautus antisneezed, and added "The quality of mercy is oesophagus." "Lie!" screamed his posimatter self, claiming instead, "The quality of mercy is not oranges." "Self-evident tripe!" called out a lonely passing fishmonger, but there was no one to hear him.

    Friday the Thirteenth came and went, and no one even breathed under it. All was thunder, fear and spongy wafers. Few dared move, still fewer dared moon, but all did sense the horrid despondency that was brought about by Election Mania.

    "Vote for me!" yelled Joddeil Manshdock, the supreme spirit of all three parties concatenated together pleonastically.

    "Vone for moo!" yelled Yelling Lord Such'n'Sutch (Saatchi & Saatchi?), and the heavens did rend themselves apart. An enormous plate of taramosalata reached down from the clouds, scooped up the carriage-return keys and hurled them spinning far, far into obliviob.

    "There's Antiplautus, Arsenic, Alum—" began Lehrer, jovially, but his piano exploded. There amidst the wreckage sat Hannibal, with a puzzled look on his face, and Theodora with a puzzled monkey on hers. Arthur crawled out from beneath the key of C^b where he had been eating a plate of sandwiches on toast. He had a monkey-puzzle tree on his face. Nice chandeliers, though.

The Antiplautus and the pluperfect conditional

    "Why hasn't Geoff extended the plot?" asked Plautus, time-jumping forward a couple and a bit millennia. (Charity? (ed))

    "Who knows?" replied his antimatter doppelganger.

"Which proves," Arthur reasoned slowly, "that you know!"

"Who?", "I?" said Plautus and Antiplautus, defining one another.

"One of you..." Arthur continued, "is the Antiplautus, the Wooffle Ooffle, the Pseud... THE AUTHOR." Sancho the Narrator trained the lengthy gunbarrel of Panza on them both. There was a tense silence. Pluperfect conditional, because no one knew what it sounded like. Apart from the Antiplautus, who was not telling.

"Confess," said the narrator. "Or the soup dragon gets it!"

"But he would had done so anyway," lied the tense.

Wooffle ooffle!

    Arthur quoth "Nevermore," letting the raven. Have it, have at it, or whatever. Sufficient to say that the carpet-cleaner was full of feathers. Wooffle offooffle mphf," she said, which probably (within the usual limitations) meant "Colder now, isn't it [The Weather]. I can feel it in me legs." Which was what she usually said, featherlessly. Today was special — featherful, in fact.

    Arthur proposed, confident that the carpet cleaner would be unable to reply. She nodded, spewing feathers. "I want to be a citizen of the universe, you see," he confided.

    "Quartz," said Donkey Hoatee. "Pity the board isn't big enough for 'Jabberwocky'." Then, pointing at Hannibal, "He shot the pope. He must be a witch." "Which?" queried Arthur, then, "Would I be a citizen of the universe if I married him?" "No, just a lot more porous!" Hannibal assured him.

    Snacho Panzer appeared, along with some cracks in the fabric of the multi-storey carpark. "You can't park that here!" said everyone, "it will put caterpillar tracks on the carpet!" ("Green," thought a passing caterpillar.) An evil chuckle proceeded from the tank. It was the narratorial voice. "Revenge is golden syrup," it said. "You told me you were the author!"

    "No, I'm Arthur," said Arthur.

    "Surrealist hack! Pseud! Witch! Green! Jabberwocky! Wooffle ooffle!" they all said, almost in harmony.

    "Anyway," Arthur concluded, "I'm going to be real."

    "Ark Ark," said the seal.

    "You're all really tiresome!" said the narratorial voice.

Breaking free

    A trapdoor squealed open in the ceiling of wherever it is they all were, I don't think it's been described apart from the enlightening comment "pink room" — and out popped the Rolfaroo. "Sun arise, early in the morning," it said for no apparent rhubarb, and the Word was with бог (Russian, sorry) and the Word was τέξτ (τό).

    "Not bizarre enough!" yelled Karswell, who had just poured a plate of melted butter into his ear. "I want to break free," he droned reginally. "Have you seen the latest edition of Dustbin Builder's Hourly? I haven't, 'cos it doesn't exist."

    Suddenly, out leapt a new character from behind a Scrabble board that wasn't there befour. It was Donkey Hoatee, and his fine bang of marry mep. He strode up to Arthur on his fine green stalliom, peered oddly at the cheese-grater welded to the llama's head, counted to ten very slowly in order to relapse, and then suffered spontaneous combustion, kicking Arthur backwards into a gash in the very fabrique of space-thyme (which had conveniently opened up).

    Arthur was vaguely surprised to find himself standing on top of a horrible concrete multistorey carpark in Worplesdon town centre.

    He looked around, unbelieving, flabbergasted.

    The pogo-stick was nowhere to be seen.

    "Carpet cleaner?" suggested a passing raven, and let him have it.

I want some plot

"So what now?" Arthur posed the crucial question. "I think we're being manipulated by second-rate surrealist writers," he continued. "I don't," replied Theodora, her flowing locks swaying gently in the afternoon breeze. "I didn't know you had dandruff," exclaimed Prof Karswell to the pope. "I don't," he replied — "I'm bald." "O.K.," interrupted Hannibal. "That's quite enough idle banter. I want some plot — and I want it now." So saying, he whipped out his Kalashnikov, and sprayed bullets everywhere.

"In the absence of a plot, a good body count is always important," mused Hannibal wisely — "yes, the old Chinese proverb is right."

Sage sinography

Zebedee arrived.

BOING! {Coiled spring}

{large bold Chinese character}
("inner impulses of the tree")

"νίψον ανομήματα μή μόναν όψιν" said Zebedee, for no apparent reason. But reason suddenly appeared.

    "Turlingdromic Palinpoops," screamed Arthur, and without waiting for a reply he ("transaccidentated through the slow fires of consciousness") climbed into the tree, rather clumsily, scattering apples red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue. The singing brat was throttled, and Reason remarked sagely, "Wyrd bið ful araede. Neither a borrower nor descend a tree, for apple loses both itself and Eve. Bong. Bong. At the third stroke it will be precisely." But the third stroke never came.

    "What is being, anyway?" mused Arthur, combing the earwigs from his hair.

{large unconvincing Chinese character}
("I can't do funny Chinese pictograms")

Dear dear

"What, is he dead, then?" asked Tree.

"Dear, dear Beerbohm," responded Irving. "What, you too?"

"Me too, what!" added Tree. "But wait — it's anachronistic."

("Dear, dear anachronistic-y!")

"Are you!" asked Arthur, a little confused, "You shouldn't have eaten so many bath buns."

"'Tis BUT an hour ago that IT WAS NIIINE!"

"You're T.S. Eliot, and putting the emphasis in the wrong place hasn't been invented yet. Dear, dear, dear Larry, compared to us you're almost alive," Irving Tree and Beerbohm concluded, with veracity.

{Musical score}
I would not be MA-A-AD sweet heaven, not ma-ad...

But in an hour's time it would have been eleven, rather too many. "How thiiin and cleear / The horns of elfland FAAINTLY blowing!"

    "No," said Arthur, a little embarrassed. "It's my small intestine..."