MEMP’IS

BOOK FIVE – “YOGA IS, as YOGA DOES”

(Saturday, January 6, 2035)

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN – “SPEEDWAY”

"Well?" the apparition asked, once more, as Miles F. Shore slouched and stammered, his hands rising to cover his shrinking, withering penis back at Stimwood’s Crisis Room... "Turn off that fex!"

Without waiting for confirmation, Thor and Scotty nearly knock heads racing each other to quell the quba, cutting off Presley's libidinous, labial loop - mid-mollusk.

"I... I'm sorry, Dr. Stimwood... I was just trying to help these Officers from the Trouble Factory..." Scotty quails...

Stimwood... for it was he... descended from the penthouse of his famous Academy... dismisses the fellow with a casual wave of his hand while focusing his glare upon Shore...

"And, I suppose you convinced these three progeny of Barney Fife that you were... what would it be, this time..." and, then, Stephen Stimwood, noticed the glastic imitation stethoscope and crumpled white coat Shore had balled up with his scrubs and attempted to heave beyond the perimeter of the fexxy lake. "Tell me," he sighed, "that you did not mislead them to believe that you, you of all the loathesome creatures that creep and posture on our institutional stage, were... a doctor?"

Shore's head droops and, trying not to call attention to himself, Norlin gapes at the legendary right-hand of Triple-J – the much-decorated analyst and educator, founder and enforcer of educational orthodoxy from nursery to University, heir to the Vitreopaedia... already a famous counselor to Presidents and Popes before the k'ball ripped the United States down the middle, cleaving off the rebellious provinces of Can- and Mex-America and leaving the angry remnants of West and East (plus… last and least… a little turd at the toe of one or that other of the Americas, coming to be known as Barataria to whence he has retired to pursue his researches).

Stephen Stimwood... certainly past eighty, by now, perhaps ninety... was almost as famous for reclusivity as for the many achievements of his youth. A legendary hypochondriac, he had persuaded Jates to summon every physician in the principality to the Academy he'd built to contain his apparatus of life-extension... yet the wheelchair he employed was a cane-backed antique predating the k'ball, the century, even the second half of the previous century. Perhaps it had been fashioned during the Roosevelt administration... second or first... it swayed and rattled under his weight as a bilious pus erupted from the oozing sores under his beard, spattering pearly little droplets into the fex.

Norlin fought down an impulse to throw up in the great man's lap as Stimwood was wheeled into a direct, confrontational position, asking: "And you? What the keb do you have to say for yourselves..."

And he extended a palsied, spotted, hairy hand that encompassed the Crisis Room... the naked students and Norlin's naked, fex-spattered girlfriends alike, all of whom were blinking and snivelling as if suddenly awakened from a hypnotic, yet horrible dream.

Henry Hat stepped forward. "The fault is entirely mine. Dr. Shore..."

"Mister Shore!" Stimwood snapped. "Wilson, at least, used to be a licensed professional... I'll leave it to you, to Ray Angeniuex and the rest of his imbecile clerks, that is, to enlighten you on the reasons for his confinement here..."

"Mister Shore, then, represented himself to me as a public-spirited professional citizen, involved in a unique therapeutic exercise that might... and he did emphasize that no promises were to be assumed... might elicit insight into the nature of certain heinous criminal acts, of which you are no doubt aware. We communicated by overland post," the suncop added smartly, presenting a rumpled sheaf of papers to the Director.

"He wrote letters?" Stimwood frowned, riffling through the documents. "This is my personal stationery... Shore, not only are you an impostor, you are also a thief..."

"I'm sorry," squeaked the naked malefactor...

"Forget it," Stimwood dismissed the thief. "Any man who can remember how, even, to read, let alone write actual letters - well, much can be forgiven."

Then, with a noisome blatting, a veritable faucet of liquid fex erupted from Norlin's tormented bowels.

"Much... though not everything, like the good Mister's abominations at Gandalkin " the Founder amended.

Suddenly abashed, the soiled talents drifted back towards their seats as a half dozen Academy janitors escorted a great vacuuming apparatus into the Crisis Room - a metal cylinder with seven sucking, snargling heads that attacked the excreta covering the floor with enthusiastic, yet taciturn, determination, overlaying the floor with a patina of ammonia, and then a sheen of bleach.

"Of course I know everything, now," Stimwood nodded, and a carbuncle on the point of his chin burst, frighteningly, spewing ropy green and dark yellow pus in spasms halfway into Shore's doomed circle, landing splat! between Bobby and Starrett. "Sorry! Age has its toll. My Academy is under surveillance, of course... as required by the Law Firm... as it would appear that the issue at hand is criminal, is it not?"

He'd addressed Norlin, but the Corporal was too sick to reply, so Henry Hat... carefully scrunching his chair towards the unblemished edge of the dais... nodded and replied...

"The banks... Blue City... that incident at the Tulane Hotel and, of course, the robbery of the Specimen Depository..."

"Not to mention the Jatesaneum!" Stimwood smirked, holding up his minipleader and nodding.

"Beg pardon?" yapped Homer Sack.

"Just another b'rokin day," Stimwood dismissed Jatesland’s newest abomination, directing Miles F. Shore to the center of the square within the circle - a spot on which the full opprobrium of his community could be focused.

"More of your stupid games," the Founder sighed. "And yet... the answer to the Trouble Factory's questions have already been answered, almost... it is not in motives or evidence that these crimes may be solved; your criminal, from what I understand, is an enthusiast of planarity, so it is by geometry that he will be taken down..."

"I... we..." Norlin winced, surmounting his nausea, "were under the impression that Mondretto actually desires to be captured, and has set us to solve a sort of puzzle..."

"He has," Stimwood agreed, "and he shall have that which he desires, as, also do the police. That is what you are here for... isn't it?... to locate your criminal, and the fruits of his venture, isn't it? Miles cooked up some pseudo-intellectual rubbish that has obscured the geometrical foundations of the case but now, rather than heaping further indignities upon the investigation like gargoyles mounting other gargoyles atop some drowned, haunted cathedral, the answer would be plain were it not so obscured and further veiled by his incompetence..."

Every reddened eye... the bright, the dull, the covetous and vengeful... locked upon the broken man at the center of the circle...

"I... I..." Miles F. Shore shuddered...

"You misled these policemen by situating your pawns according to the rules and mores of Stimwood, not the city, in which the actual criminality transpired. More specifically, that most criminal quadrant of Barataria... the Southwest. You there!" he charged Thor and Scotty, "have fresh scrubs brought in, traitjackets too... and clothing for our visitors as well. And, also, a chalkboard. And a kebbin’ hose!" He clapped his hands, three times. The vast puddle of fex was rapidly disappearing up the seven snouts of the seven-headed beast (the stench, however, remained despite its chemical dilution) and, between the Founder's words, there was dead, prescient silence where Elvis Presley's "Clam" had been stilled. Stephen Stimwood stroked his chin, then withdrew his sopping, soiled hand with disgust - and, not a little curiosity - one of his attendants producing a handkerchief...

"Thank you. So... we seem to be suspended between the two forms of social progress, Artifice and Nature. Our criminal's charge to progressive plasma in Barataria... a literal charge, considering the genome of Proteins X and Y... has been to determine and name the right and wrong. One is right, and one is wrong... can one of you tell us which is the wrong, and what is to be done? Rocky..."

"I choke artifice," the scarred, swarthy man vowed... a more imposing presence, now, for having divested himself of the floral housecoat and pink slippers...

"I fex artichokes!" Tony Debris blurted out, with a dim glee that caused Homer Sack to lean over towards Norlin, muttering...

"Jes'ole!"

Stimwood's electricians having rushed in behind the Founder, the flickering, sputtering lights had been put to order as, also, the pneumatic door, which hissed open to admit a phalanx of clean, purposeful orderlies bearing fresh scrubs and traitjackets as well as a firehose which, aimed at the investigating parties, scourged their skins down to the pink – after which all were roughly re-clothed. Dr. Shore struggled briefly, but, soon enough, the folds and hollows of the garment absorbed him; as the closing of the old refrigerator door of C-Squad would have absorbed the odor of putrefying Integral or moldy Krajjit. Or, as an inexplicable nugget bubbling to the surface of Norlin's memory, a bowl of the diced onion that his father once enjoyed atop his hamburgers before the k'ball - before meat and strong-flavoured seasonings had been outlawed as detrimental to health, security and property.

"Doctor Nick prescribed Cubisms," Tony Debris persisted, miming a man smoking a cigar... "Miles had only tainted smilk and laxcite cookies..."

"Hey - they were dynamic laxatives," the defeated impostor defended himself...

Stimwood pounded a fist on the armrest of his ancient rattan wheelchair for attention. "If Miles had proposed arrangement of his talents by fours, and not by threes, the outcome of his games would have been... Jud?"

"A factor of five," deduced the gaunt man who, Norlin realized, now toadied up to Stimwood as he had to the deceptive “Doctor” and no doubt would have done also to his grandfather - were the estimable Hennison Crawford still among the living. "The five fingers... no, five keys? The five senses?"

"A wheel may be round," Henry Hat pointed out, "but the spokes within are straight."

"Lines are abstract, no matter what Mondrian's critics... now or then... maintained. But... they also represent the female essence of nature. If you were competent, Shore, you would've paired your talents... my students... with those of these men from the Trouble Factory, or those other so-called witnesses that policemen bring to this place from time to time. Instead, you merely indulged yourself in mental masturbation - setting a mirror between the worlds in which criminality reflects criminality and neither disclosure nor illumination is engendered."

Shore looked around, seemingly hoping that one of the busy Stimwood factotums would, at least, bring him a folding chair.

"But at least..." and the Founder pushed himself up from his wheelchair and, with ruddy, blotched cheeks and white, flowing barrister's locks now flowing in the mild breeze huge fans that his attendants had posted to aid the Crisis Room's weak ventilation ports for the deodorization of Shore’s failed experiment, wobbled to the very spot between King Jack and Dawn, and the policemen on the dais...

"Sir?" a janitor nudged Norlin, pointing downward. Recognizing the man's intent, the Corporal obliging lifted his feet, and one of the snargling vacuum-heads neatly sucked up all of the fex that had spattered the dais.

"It is advantageous to be perceived as an invalid," Stimwood winked, "except when it is not. Bring me my rod. And put that chalkboard there!" he ordered, as a factotum pressed a long, dark staff into the outstretched hand of the genius, whispering words from the outside world into his greasy ear while Thor and Scotty wheeled the board into position next to the Crisis Room windows... the twelve-thirty position, between Crawford and King Jack.

"Draw… a circle!" the Founder extended his cane, and Scotty blinked...

In the distance, something great and ominous transpired - rattling the French windows of the Crisis Room and sending shivers up Norlin's spine that passed parallel to, but distinct from the waning painshafts of the contaminated smilk and cookies.

"Sir?"

"Draw a kebbin' circle!" Stimwood bellowed. "No - go stand behind the chalkboard and, after Thor has followed my instructions, you may erase outmoded figures. Thor - take the kebbin' chalk."

The other attendant, fairly beaming, stationed himself by the chalkboard, ready for orders.

"A circle..." Stimwood sighed, and Thor quickly and capably complied, and... upon the Founder's further command... drew crosshairs in the circle's center.

"There. Consider this image a rough map of Barataria, as well as this room... and where the lines intersect, the crux of the cross, or target, if you will, is... can anybody tell me? Perhaps the police?"

"The Jatesaneum?" Homer Sack squinted.

"Exactly. And, up until a few minutes ago, I would have directed you there, where your criminal could be apprehended. But, of course, Dr. Shore did not perceive... I have been informed that the criminal is gone and so, too, is the Jatesaneum. No great loss," he scoffed, "pretentious relic! Anyway, Doctor Shore, first thought - best thought, right? The variable, of course, being the perspicacity of the thinker..."

"He said perspiration," Bobby snickered.

"Turn the chalkboard," Stimwood ordered, pointedly ignoring the boy. "Erase the circle, Scotty - Thor, draw a quadrant like unto the Southwest, with sixteen curves, representing the numbered streets. Crime, as ever, has been the province of the Southwest - not exclusively, true, but we can allow for exceptions... now, officers, kindly disclose the locations of some of these criminal activities, if you will..."

"The Third-Fifth Bank..." Norlin replied...

"At..."

"Two-fifty-one Seventh, Southwest," he answered Stimwood's inquiry. Limping only slightly, the Founder advanced to the chalkboard, took the chalk from Thor, and drew a great, pink X near the easternmost frontier of the quadrant, South Straight Street. And, when the great man said "Next?" Norlin pointed to the top of the chalkboard, saying "Blue City."

"That is one of those exceptions that I mentioned - the purpose of which is to confuse and deceive. Ignore it! Again!..."

"The Tulane Hotel," Homer Sack trumped his boss, with no little satisfaction... "down there at four-fifty Eleventh." Stimwood drew another fierce, pink X and then, addressing Henry Hat, asked if he wished to make a contribution.

"That would be the Specimen Depository on Seventh. Four-fifty Seventh," added the solar policeman, with a knowing smile.

"Well, well... well!" Stimwood said, after X 'ing that spot. "We have a pattern... is it an equilateral triangle? Dawn?"

The stripper blinked, then smiled for the Founder. "Sure seems so..."

"Perhaps," Stimwood said, "although both Triple-J and Mondrian despised triangularity. Perhaps the latter's disciple is not so discriminating... still, we are obliged to consider another possibility, a criminal location equidistant, and opposite the bank, as the crow flies, which would situate it at around 700 Eleventh. And, advancing to the chalkboard again, he drew a ? at that location, stepped back and frowned. "Is the criminal using Jatesist curvature against itself, or has he forged onward, onward into new frontiers of geometry? Are these locations midpoints of segments whose angularity will reveal four possible corners of a square, or circumferential boundaries? We need more information... can someone suggest another significant location?"

"This place..." Rocky blurted out. "The Academy!"

"Interesting," Stimwood allowed, "but off the grid, as is Blue City. There is, perhaps, a macrogeometry, into which these, and other, variables may be factored, but let's not overestimate the complexity of this criminal. Mondrian was a simple artist, mostly devoid of pretension in his personal affairs, we may hope that this Mondretto is simple, also."

"The Trouble Factory?" suggested Bard, straightening his cardboard crown. "Jates knows - some of us have spent enough time there..."

"Not in the Southwest, unfortunately," Judson Crawford shot him down. And then, while the old man and King Jack glared at one another, the choleric Zihei pointed to Dawn.

"Kebbin' donna did her blade work on the Hamorite Strip... an' come to think of it, if Mandrake, over there, done what people say he did for Dr. Wilson, the Trouble Factory ought check out Pawn Alley..."

"Or," Pisgah appended, "the Chinese Market."

"Interesting," Stimwood repeated himself, drawing three more ?'s, then stepping back to survey his labours, resting both hands atop his walking stick... which, Norlin now discerned, was knobbed and ridged with venomous-looking snakes carved into the stout, dark wood.

"There is a sort of pattern there," Tony Debris tried to help out.

Nodding, Stephen Stimwood drew a wide circle, encompassing the Depository, the Third Fifth, the Tulane and the still-mysterious location to the west... an arc passing through the Strip (the Prancing Pony, in fact) and Pawn Alley, though not the Chinese Market. And then, another notion occurred to Norlin and he bent over, momentarily weak and sick again, as if having consumed more of Shore's tainted manna.

"Maybe someone's kebbin' with us," he ventured, "playing some sort of sick game." He glanced at Shore, then... covertly... at Henry Hat...

"I'm listening..." Stimwood aimed his pink chalk at Norlin.

"Well," the Corporal began, "what if Mondretto's pattern of criminality replicates this very moment - and in this very room? May I?"

"Certainly," the Founder handed over his chalk.

Within Stimwood's circle, Norlin rested the pink chalk atop the question mark suggested by the Chinese Market at Five Hundred Ninth, took a deep breath, and then drew a none-too-reliable line across the board to Four Hundred Eighth.

"Basilisk Academy," he suggested. "Ask Bobby?"

"Ask Jody..." the squirming delinquent retaliated.

Feeling sick to his stomach anew, Norlin handed the pink chalk back to Stimwood and returned to the dais, incapable of further speculation. Fortunately, the Founder had also discerned the emergence of a pattern, and was busily slashing at the chalkboard... a blizzard of lines and curves, straight and dotted, as well as pink X's and question marks, his voice accelerating as he drew...

"Twelve noon - or midnight, if you will - Specimen Depository. One o'clock - that would be... three twenty five Southwest Sixth," Stimwood pointed at King Jack. "What is the vissure of this location?"

"Don't know nuthin'," the crimelord recoiled, crown slipping over his forehead.

"That's the Catholic Restaurant, isn't it?" Homer Sack whispered to Norlin.

"It is." Aloud, the Corporal declared: "The Catholic Restaurant. Certain elements of its ambience imply lifestyle criminality.

"So, then!" And Stimwood rubbed his elbow across the ?, replacing it with an X and, then, pointing at Dawn. "Sixth Street, high two hundreds, sound familiar?"

"I dinn't do..." and, then, as she realized the question, changed her answer to "don't know the place. Never been there. Not my fault..."

Stimwood frowned at the question mark still occupying the two o'clock location. "To three o'clock, then...the Third-Fifth Bank Next the... uh... Prancing Pony..."

"I was set up," Dawn insisted, but in a little, mouse-voice...

"Next," Stimwood continued, "high three-hundreds, Tenth Street, probably on the... north," he transposed, "side of Buddha. Any suggestions?"

Something nagged at Norlin - an answer, just out of reach. And, then, Terushka Batter jumped out of her chair.

"That's just where my building is! This is uncanny! Veiled enemies have ensconced themselves in my building - Communist bums and little girls screaming out names that are, perhaps, taxidermied poodles. The tu-men, Dar*Slattery and Ransome who have been violencing me, knocked on my door, last night, because I had inquired, of a Trouble Factory patrolman on the street, at random, as to what might constitute sufficient evidence against the falselanders. There is no 'a-hah!' It is all the proof I need - knowing that I am important, even if just as a tool between various factions of the Disorg cultgroup inducing contaminated vissure by running their thumbs as a tainted lemonwedge between sentences across the rim of my teacup..."

"Back there, at two o'clock?" Lola broke in. "I live there. That's me..."

"Elvis Presley's mother, Gladys, told me that her son would command streets dominated by the new, pastel concrete," Troosh soldiered on. "Vernon installed illicit mirrors..."

Stimwood's great gut rumbled with exasperation, he shook his head - shaggy, white hairs wafting across the Crisis Room on dirty, invisible currents. Norlin watched as a solitary lock floated towards him, settling on the cuff of the scrubs that he'd donned to replace his soiled clothes... pink scrubs, at that... the Founder crooked a finger, summoning the miserable Miles F. Shore out of the corner he'd slunk into for another dose of humiliation.

"When you lured these men from the Trouble Factory here, with their four so-called talents, did it ever occur to you to integrate their contributions with those of our students? Of course it didn't! That is why I am an Emeritus, and you are a fraud... now, then, stand up, Mrs. Mkamwe, is it? Makonaway?"

"You can call me Lola," Norlin's girlfriend smiled, "and it's Miss... I, too, seem to have outlived many husbands."

"And Mrs. Batter... go to that five o'clock seat," Stimwood pointed gallantly, "you just stand up and stand by, Starrett, we'll find out where you belong, by and by. Lola, then, go to Dawn's chair... Dawn, you obviously should've been placed on the other side of Zihei... stand up, Bobby... wait, you belong inside the circle, the seat corresponding to Basilisk which Mrs. Batter has been obliged to vacate. Your failing, Miles, was that you sought motivation in arranging these people... motivation as encompassed the dynamics within this Acadamy as opposed to reflecting the other world outside, that world of crime, and mysterious doctrines in which Mondretto seeks symmetry."

Stephen Stimwood's great, gnarled fingers slashed and pointed, the chalkboard growing dense with lines, shadows and, inevitably, the question marks were rubbed out and replaced by crosses. "Dr. Wilson - you hunted your donors at the Tulane, so remain where you are... Pisgah, you obviously belong in Bard's seat, the Catholic Restaurant, instead of that block of Southwest Twelfth, which contains..."

"Andy's Diner," Homer Sack spoke up.

"Excellent. And so, King Jack... go down to your place, your secret a secret no longer."

"I ain't one of th' freaks!" the crimelord protested but, when the crown slipped again, Norlin recognized what Zihei had alluded to in the pointed, elongated ears of a rodent... or, perhaps, a weasel of some sort. And, after some further sputtering, King Jack slunk southwards, ratlike, and the Founder (turned his gaze upon) Peg Reilly and Vona Rae.

"I believe that you two ladies reside at one of the outer points of our clock... or zodiac, if you prefer."

"He's in my place. I'm in that lozenge on Ninth Street," Vona Rae protested, "I don't got nothing to do with the kebbin' Chinese Market... I respect the law..."

"And I am sure that you do... please stand, Mr. Tony. We are not saying that you have an association with the Chinese Market, in fact... didn't you vandalize public art at this plaza..."

"In front of the bus station!" Bobby blurted out. "At four hundred Ninth... where that lady used to be," and he pointed to Lola.

"I didn't vandalize any statue," Tony complained, "I merely melted some Jatesist fex!"

Nonetheless, under the stern gaze of the Founder, he relocated.

"Officers," Stimwood inquired, "what knowledge, if any, do you have of the lozenge at Five Hundred Tenth, Southwest?"

"Slim?" Norlin considered, turning to Homer Sack...

"I could call in to check..."

"A man of leisure, so they say, had one of his cribs around there," Norlin said. "He doesn't use it, at present... there's been a certain problem, well, an infestation..."

"Nonetheless," Stimwood corrected him, "one of our students developed... well, let us call it an imprintation with that lozenge and its tenant, Peter Proctor. Isn't that right... Lucy?"

The defeated woman looked up, asking: "If I tell you what you want me to say, will you let me see our baby?"

"Perhaps," the Founder sighed. "For the time being, I want you to exchange places with Mrs. Reilly... seven twenty-five Twelfth is your lozenge, isn't it?"

"Why... yes," Peg admitted cautiously, "but how did you... I mean..."

"Because we have confirmed three of the four cardinal points of our compass... or clock, if you will... as being integral to matter at hand, excusing the pun. The Specimen Depository, the Third-Fifth Bank, the Tulane. There's only one more actual criminal vortex in the Southwest, and, since you have observed it and communicated, frequently, to Corporal Norlin, it is obvious that your own residence must be adjacent to the premises. Seven twenty-five Twelfth, I believe, commands a clear view of..."

"The back door to Philip Said's doggie brothel," Norlin snapped his fingers. Starrett miaouwed despairingly... Homer Sack rewarded the Corporal with an evil glare...

"Not a very impressive job of deduction, eh?" the Founder baited Miles F. Shore, who accepted the abuse as his due. "Quickly, then... you do not belong at the Chinese Market, Miss Vona Rae, go, instead, to your own lozenge." She passed Tony Debris, on his way to the chair representing the Bus Station without a word, or glance, and Stimwood pointed to her vacated seat, addressing Starrett. "Go!... while neither the police, nor myself, have irrefutable evidence of your activities at the Chinese Market, may we agree that it might have something to do with your carnivorous diet, against all tenets of Triple-J for humans, true, perhaps less black and white in certain cases as yours. Go!"

As the cat-man padded through the center of the circle... now containing Bobby, Tony and Lucy instead of Norlin's girlfriends... Stimwood motioned for Thor and Scotty to turn over the chalkboard, draw a great circle and a square within. Hobbling to his planar canvas, pink chalk in hand, he slashed intersecting horizontal and vertical diameters, then another X linking the corners of the square.

Tapping the common point of intersection with his chalk, Stimwood declared: "There, gentlemen, there is where you will find your criminal's lair."

"That's at the exact center of the Southwest Quadrant," Homer Sack deduced. "There's a little public space, where Buddha, Abraham and Ninth Street all cross, and the building opposite that... four-fifty Ninth..."

"Triple-J's old glass foundry," Norlin interrupted. "It was empty awhile, haven't they been trying to rent out spaces on the ground floor of late?" he asked the Founder.

"Don't know - don't care," Stephen Stimwood barked, throwing the pink chalk against one of the bay windows. "You people have brought enough disgrace and distraction to my Academy - if you do believe that is where Mondretto is holed up, go and arrest him. And you," he ordered the attendants, "get this kebbin' nut out of my presence, and back to solitary." Within an instant, Shore was traitjacketed and escorted away... none too gently... the pneumatic door hissing behind him in departure.

"You honestly didn't know?" Stimwood snarled at Norlin...

"If there is fault," Henry Hat began, "it is mine because..."

"Because you're a Solar Commissioner, not a real cop. I expect no better from such auxiliary agencies, but you... Norton, is it?... what a catastrophically dismal calibre of law enforcement you and Bowser, there, represent. Exactly where, in the Trouble Factory, are you employed?"

Norlin coughed, mindful of his girlfriends. "Uh... C-Squad..."

"Then, of all people at the Trouble Factory, you ought to know better..."

"Yes..."

"Yes... what?" the Founder pressed, raising the serpent-encrusted staff...

"Yes, sir!"

"Mr. Jates was not cruel. He was clean, very correct, but, also, a gentlemen. These... these kebbin' shiks... the City Council, Law Firm, all that bunch... they are rewriting Jezzy's Vitreopaedia to serve their own corrupt interests and perpetuate their reign. When discovered," Stimwood promised, "your criminal shall prove Unvitreous."

"Snow!" the dispirited Lucy pointed out the great French windows of the Crisis Room. A soft confetti of blasted paper - all of the interdicted old pages of the Jatesaneum rendered into floating fragments of sedition blown across the heavens for all Barataria to, at last, behold.

"More macaroni!" interjected Pisgah...

"No, we have had quite enough." And, one of his attendants having wheeled Stimwood's chair up, the Founder collapsed back into it, exasperated, (although not too spent to wink at Terushka Batter). Peg Reilly crossed her arms emphatically - Norlin took this disapprobative gesture as an augur that the return voyage in the Departmental hydrovan would be an unpleasant one - over and above the chaos resultant from swarms and sirens of official traffic speeding too and from the ruins of the Jatesaneum.

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