A Woman Reaches an Inflection Point.

 

By now, since her sister has been out looking for her for several hours, she figures it should be safe for her to walk quietly, and in an appropriate manner, with a sealed package to near the outer shores of a foreign room. She will resume bargaining once the shortest of the tables have been well secured. Her knowledge of placements is sketchy at best, but the flair she's shown in the past will hold her in good stead even if, as everyone expects, a blind tracing is not enough to repel a timid dowager if a tunnel is shown to be at risk. We check the water with a shellacked tube, and still no sign. To some this might seem romantic, but for us it's a matter of lights and desk.

If she was seen asking around about my part in the dilemma, she never let on. But I'd be reluctant to put it past her to rehearse silently and if no one could remember seeing her face then a swollen finger would have to do. I know that I'd told her my side but by this time it was clear that her husband, who'd taught me to count beyond one million when I was a wee bit of a slip, could no longer stand her love of barely scalded thread. She said it would keep her safe in the event of a random outbreak. He dismissed this as just so much pseudoscience.

I was afraid for years that it might come to this. And now, here we are. Just wavering. But still insistent that any goading will come to naught. Even as our pen sales are holding steady, the stately varnish is all but worn clear through. When I see her again I'll be sure to transfer some obvious lengths into her ivory box. It won't hurt to get her on the record in case all prior indications are lost in an expected fire. One or more unusual characters have been observed lately, spreading false tales about a copper mining operation in Zambia. Everyone will soon know that this is pure Grade A piffle. And I won't be shocked to hear them renounce their faith.

In the morning when Dear Leader promotes his vision of an expected Appearance, I will be seen to wear my Complebent Robe and carry a Roman Vidol at steady mounds of rictus. She, however, if no longer lost but not yet found, can be counted upon to train a host of glimmers to induce an aptitude for panache in a prancing 'legend' of some type of Game. You should be warned, though, not to get too close or form needless alliances when a hat alone would do the trick. Our play in this matter is pure scope. And, one other thing: rifles are forbidden once you hit the Grounds. Just sayin'.

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Travel Tips Plus Other Useful Advice for Members and non-Members Alike.

The most important time of the year for travel dispectories is expected to arrive in the following two weeks as the winds off Lake Murveld take a marvelous turn to the Southeast and our afternoon smell engages brightly into a far more complex engagement. It is said that on occasion it will give every impression of resembling a dull type of snack food. The size as well is not something that should give anyone pause unless they believe they'd be better off appearing where a bordering signal is fast approaching inevitability. In that case they are to treat all comers like the plainly false stem of rejoinders of which it is our duty to warn in companies large or ball-like.

Any natural pantanelle, with or without obvious harmful angles, could be absorbed with minimal fixations. By the time a massive stone siltherture is positioned as it unfolds to entrain our collective blanyards, a moment or two will no longer be enough  to check if your likeable patterns will delay the swiftest passage to greet the neap tide with a sharp, if hollow whisper. If you do decide to enter our fray, you will need to doubly intrude, or else feign a patterned response dipole.

You have all been warned about a code. In fact, I have personally memorized the favorite shape carried in each of your minds. Some may find my efforts to be precious. I prefer to allow a type of grit to settle in the razor-thin margins of a likely individual's left foot. This will give us time to collect each of the things which we've been told you pray to love at distance. When the tallest of us is instructed to issue a factual smile, then your trick will have been determined to be efficacious. No blood is expected. The weight is irrelevant. Hair color is paramount. As you practice pronouncing a word, please remember that shading is everything. Then we will get about trapping your hands in a shallow pond. If you live for granular enjoyments, this should be your ticket.

Now walk slowly to the front. Bring your trepsis. Ask your gods for a clarity of temperature. Observe our prolapse induction. A pill is waiting. Do not swallow. Just engulf it in a red flame. Allow the head to dip ever so slightly to the left. You're almost there. During sleep periods you are encouraged to dream only of a gigantic iron wheel. It will take you into the final morsel. Tell us if you feel as if you are being gently chewed. No paper will ever be used again. Only string will be provided. Your health is not at risk. The water comes closer. You will soon meet our cleanest partner. She encumbers duration in the liveliest chambers. No one will ever forget. We love you inside. Now hide. Carefully.

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Swimming-pool Shapes in Perspective.

 

There's a swimming pool in our local area which is shaped, weirdly enough, like a bird in distress. And there's a not insubstantial group who sometimes goes there, who, if I'm being honest, believes they have a right to keep certain things not just private, but actively secret. For example, when I took it upon myself to ask the tallest one what his favorite color was, you know what he said? He asked if I'd like to join him for dinner later. In the trade, this is what we call 'classic evasion'. I knew a ruse when I spotted one and this one wasn't smelling very funny, if you ask me.

When I traced his '98 Buick LeMans to the parking annex of the First Baptist Church in Owensville, Nebraska, I left a business size manila folder near a park about a mile away in the hopes that this wouldn't give me away. Once I started to focus on his troubled marital history, I knew that something just wasn't quite right. Or I might have said that something just didn't add up. Whichever way I, or anyone, might say or write it, you can tell I was stumped. Once I got back into school in a supervisory capacity, I ran his numbers and came up empty. Except for one very particular number. And that number was: 792.

A lot of folks are wondering, and have for quite a long time, why is seven hundred and ninety-two such a weird number? It could be something about the way it looks. Also the way it sounds if you say it aloud; even more so if you learn to say it backwards. Forward or backward, it has this funny way of getting people in trouble. There's a rumor that someone died but there's nothing to back that up.

Two months later, when I looked up and saw him standing inside my shaving mirror, I immediately knew where I'd seen him before: a backyard barbecue in Murphysboro, Tennessee on October 7, 1956. He was the guy who insisted that he was a real Grade A know-it-all. I knew that he had a 'thing' for stuff like that. He could tell I wasn't kidding. The next morning I rushed him into surgery. Even after the operation he swore that I'd stolen his wife's pincushion. Please let the record show that this is impossible. Why? It happens that I am violently allergic to pincushions and have been since I was a kid. So there!

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WARNING ISSUED; ISSUE DENIED!

 

I have been warned by no less than our County Leasing Agent that there are hidden agendas at play in an apparently simple request which we received at the behest of a forlorn officient to whom I gave a ride in the waning days of Summer 1997. This is so long ago that those of us who normally lurch into action at the drop of a pin feel like there's work to be done here. No one with a face blackened by years of incomparable grime like yours truly can afford to ruffle the feathers of those still standing in the face of intractable semantic whirlpools the world over. Once the terra cotta is dry, I can ill afford to allow the God-given truth to shine for all to see. Because if I do, one thing is very certain: a passage in a very rare tome will be cited, whereas before, when some of us decided to stick to our guns, the lion's share of the lubricants would be directly deposited on our formal night wear and our appearance at a rally in a Southern Methodist stronghold would become just another open and shut case. The ones who hurt the most will not be the intended victims of our perfidy. That honor itself could be tainted with the telltale rubbish from a rather imposing gent who's got all the help he needs.

We like to tell the innocent among us that we entered the picture when a very particular line was drawn across an outdated map. My confreres have struggled for what seems like a few seconds to come up with a more effective name than the one we habitually applied to those seeking redress from our highest victim to date. He looks, for all the world, like a dandy exemplar of living in a way which minimizes the scope of scoundrels around an improvised co-hash. There are structures to be erected. But now that one or more of our trial septuaries have squandered a most precious asset, anyone who makes time available during a busy part of the year, can expect only a small bit of gel to be extracted from their left hand, if that. We didn't reach this decision lightly. The one expert who was eager to be wined and dined in the end could only expect a raft of nuisance regulations to be used against him in a formal hearing not worth the paper it was printed on. And, in case anyone should see him hurling smallish parts in a room on the campus of ICU, you'll know that our work is far from done. And then some!

Kelly Rabner wishes that some of you would spring to his defense and help him polish off the last bits of a true-crime drama and deploy the full force to which you are so vainly entitled. Only one victor at a time will be enough to insure that a tangent conceals its compliment and is hardwired to make maximal use of a deficient desk appearance ticket. By their names you can tell if they no longer shower their meager messenger boys with aptly concealed teflon sheaths. Where does it say that I get to make all the rules? If she was you, she wouldn't let them foment ever newer elements when what we already have has served us so well over the last dozen years, if that. When I come to the end of my time here, let it never be said that I took time out to look askance at anyone in the robotics industry writ large. That would be a heckuva way to be remembered after all the pilferage which went uninvestigated for years on end. Why would anyone get the feeling that you're still not with us? Could it be that you've already been asked about that? That really hurts, just not the way you think it should, that's all.  

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