The Mystery of Placement.

 

Excuse me, but I'm still not sure how I got into this place. It seems one of the younger members had called his Dad in the wee hours of a morning not very much like this one at all. I'd seen the man grasping at legends in hopes that one of us would make a move to forestall a victory speech in the name of rising signs of non-specific terminals in our very midst. He pleaded with me not to tell the boy about our time in the Service and I, in turn, made it quite clear that one of us would be well advised to make an illegal copy of a moribund instructional tape-delay system. This is where both of us made a good-faith effort to cross every 'I' and dot each lackadaisical 'T' before things got out of hand. One time, as I escorted a group of disoriented shepherds across a distinctly underwhelming span, I was struck by how much I really needed to organize a circulation event during the aftermath of one of our high-brow affairs. Because, after all, what can they really do to you if you decide to suit up in a trim-waisted caftan and install a threadbare jackigan inside each homeowner's dooly pan? Not much, if the reigning experts are to be believed.

So, as I'm still of two minds about where a helping hand might be abjured, especially in this God-forsaken edifice, there doesn't seem too much choice but to enter a darkened room and whisper secret formulae into an inert squallbox and wait with all due contrition for the next episode in our ongoing series of mind-numbingly boring advisory codicils. When I've asked around, and seen the reaction to the pleas of a forlorn young gymnast from the provinces, I'm reminded of the time, not too long ago, if I'm being honest (I'm not), when all you had to do was poke a mirror around this or that corner and wait for the sound to steadily build. Until then, you'd be left looking through the oldest shift letters imaginable. At which time, the only choice would be to go straight to the police, make a false confession and hope for the best. In the event that a person wearing a peculiar headdress came up with a bone-headed scheme to transfer you, lock, stock and barrel, into a segmented compound, only then would you be eligible for recompense from a duly authorized gantry stub.

Now, I know this all sounds like a lot to take in, especially on such short notice. But, you have to believe me when I say that one of my fondest memories while growing up on the Southern Rim was to see if I could hook up a dyspeptic branch manager with an isotypically fragile ragamuffin just to see the effect on jerry-built hindrances the world over. The pain it caused my collaborators was more than worth the effort it took to wrap a stained cloth around an RF-controlled bantry pump. If ever you find yourself confronted by a room full of angry caretakers, and have a hard time determining which way to turn, you could do a lot worse than to chafe the cuffs of a delapidary coroner while casing a nearby schoolhouse for one-of-a-kind stock chiselers. A word to the weary is still a worm to the wise by any other name. Thus sayeth the Lard. Ahk-meng.

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