Banana version of novel

From PenguinWiki

The Banana sat with all the others. It sat with its freshly broken stem pointed up to the flouro glow of the old fruit shed's lights. It watched as the bugs flew around and around the luminescent tubes in dizzying circles.

 _
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        `. `-_     ``--..       _.-' ,'
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'Fools,' thought the banana. 'Poor fools'

The conveyor on which the banana sat began to move more swiftly as Tina, the banana farmer's overweight daughter, pressed a button on the side of the ancient machine.

The old conveyor grunted to itself in the way only heavy plant and machinery can. 'Why do I have to do all the hard work,' it thought. 'Maybe if you did a bit of heavy lifting you wouldn't be so fat, Tina.' added the machine vocally.

Tina couldn't hear the slight, but all the bananas on the conveyor did, the shed erupting in the laughter of ten thousand bananas.

Tina slapped at a mosquito which had landed on her sweaty neck. It screamed as it realised it was about to die. "YYEEEESSSSSS!!" the fly word for "no".

Splat.

On the spiderweb-covered window sill, Larry and Fred, two huge white-tailed rats stared in fascination. "Wow. Look at all them bananas," moaned an underfed Larry. "Yeah," said Fred "We're gonna eat like kings tonight."

A few hours later the conveyor ground to an exhausted halt and Tina shepherded out the underpaid backpackers, who were unfortunate enough to have ended up working for her father, out of the shed. "The serfs," he called them. Bastard.

Larry stared at the door and licked his lips as the foreign voices receded into the dusk. "Right," said Fred. "Let's go."

The floor of the shed was sticky and warm and Larry held his breath as he followed Fred. "I just hope we don't run into................"

[edit] B

John realised he just didn't care any more. Even the editor didn't care any more, he realised - their posting hadn't been updated for over a week. It was all going nowhere. And there weren't enough 'banana' references. Well, that was something he could change, he thought. After he ate a banana.

John sat down to eat the banana. He could have eaten it standing up, or even jumping on one foot. Bananas were a very versatile fruit, he realised.

"Hmm, I wonder what sort of deals I can find on bananas at www.banana.com?" he wondered.

He quickly checked the website but the lure of his waiting tome was sufficiently strong and so he began to read...

You're probably wondering about the story of Mr. Gestalt and the thousand penguins (or was it a million?). Or possibly you weren't but you are now. Well, let me be the first to tell you that it's nothing you want to get involved in. As you're now curious, let me begin by asking if you've seen the movie "The Never Ending Story"? You remember how the kid got stuck in the story and was essentially dead to friends and family? If you wish to avoid this lifestyle I beg of you stop now. If this fate appeals to you read on...

Our story begins on a foggy, wintry morning in a mythical region called Malina. Or Mizena. It doesn't really matter because the location and it's name is as vaporous as your imaginings and I hesitate to limit you. It is large and quite nice, and you could vacation there. I couldn't but you might. There is a room there, make it comfortable with a blazing ash fire, book lined walls, an open bottle of good red wine. Take a look in this room, where a man named Gestalt types away...

If you are a poor typist the word 'banana' is one of those words that can be difficult to type. There is a tendency to type 'baa' or even 'bananna' - only one of which is right. Mr. Gestalt enjoyed eating bananas, but didn't enjoy writing about them for that very reason. Instead, he wrote statements such as "All is here. Nothing is there. Each of us poised between all and nothing. For some, all or nothing. For more, all and for even more again, nothing. For nothing, all, and one for all and all for one. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And one! All together now, and then again and so on..."

He wasn't sure what it meant. He wasn't supposed to. His style was to keep writing for as much of the morning as possible. Anything, stream of consciousness stuff if necessary. Then he spent the afternoon editing it all into some kind of coherent content followed by an evening of almost continuous deletes. Tomorrow would be the same. He decided to keep writing:

"Who says the sense of being alone has to be omnipresent and we have to feel weighed down by it? All said and done, the "being alone" is a feeling, and like all feelings it is supposed to be transitory and it will pass, whether we like it or not. Like a kidney stone, though less painfully."

He felt like a split banana. A banana split. Or maybe a banana smoothie. Or perhaps, at a stretch, banana pie. It was such a versatile fruit! He did a little dance - spelling the word banana out with his body - 'B-A-N-A-N-A'!

Sweat flew from his underarms and back as he finished the final 'A' by swinging his arms into a point above his head. The sweat did little to stop the dance's friction induced conflagration that erupted from the crotch of Mr. Gestalt's pants and quickly spread to the shirt above his nipples. Subsequently the tender flesh of his nipples also ignited and gave off symmetrical blue flames indicating localized temperatures above 1400 degrees Celsius.

In an evolved defensive reflex inherited from his grandfather (a recessive gene that skipped generations) his mammary glands secreted a viscous milky fire retardant which flowed over his body extinguishing the flames. Due to the laws of gravity, Gestalt had to manually smear the liquid over his head and shoulders. This fact should not be seen as an evolutionary shortcoming because flame only rarely engulfs the body from the top down. Ahhhh, thought Mr. Gestalt, as wisps of smoke rose from under his fingernails and foreskin, I should really stop dilly dallying. Back to work.

After taking a nice long shower to remove the white sap like emulsion covering his body, Mr. Gestalt sat down and began jotting down the schematic of his banana time machine, the specifics of which had come to him spontaneously while splitting double-stuff Oreos to lick the insides. Although he lacked any formal training in physics and had been home schooled by rabbits who lovingly raised him in the wild, he felt that he was on to something. Papa Cottonballs would be proud, he thought to himself as he drew something between a trapezoid and a parallelogram with something looking like a snail shell coming out of it.

He had already tested a 'beta' version of this device on his pet eel with limited success. He had heard from a homeless Italian man on the subway that eels were spectacularly difficult to kill, that they could survive even with their heads cut off. During the beta test, although the eel's head had come off as planned, the eel had subsequently died. This inherent corporal fragility had thrown a monkey wrench into Mr. Gestalt's plans. He was contemplating the removal of one or two of the 3126 spinning hammers from his schematic when his eyes fell on the banana in his hand. He licked it pensively. 'Maybe what I need is more hammers, and maybe a dual phase electrical source', thought Mr. Gestalt. It was crazy enough to work.

With the help of his jungle friends, Version 1.1 of Mr. Gestalt's banana time machine was ready the next day. True, it looked like shit, but so did everything as Mr. Gestalt was all-but-brown color blind. This had actually helped throughout his life as it allowed him to set his standards very low; All his girlfriends had looked like shit, his eel had looked like swimming shit, and he saw a big pile of shit every time he looked in the mirror. Two years earlier he had been required to wear an eye patch for several weeks to let an infection heal. During this time he had no depth perception and took his own feces to the movies once and attempted to engage it in coitus twice.

Mr. Gestalt shook his head to rid himself of those disturbing memories. Having readied the machine he was now sitting in front of the main console punching in the exact date and time in the past to which he would be transported. It was now or never. He protected his head with his hands and his neck with his knees and pushed the start button with his big toe.

...........................................

"....Yet, Edison, the genius, created a device to record his voice, so that different people could hear it. What good would Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the phone have been if there were not someone on the other end of the line. And, a particularly acute question for me - which is more important? The beautiful person or the admirer? For what is the point of a beauty unappreciated?"

Little James' head was aching. His creative writing teacher was getting them all to try something deeper and more unlike themselves every week and right now he hardly recognized himself. He knew he ought to write something more important, like a sequel to "War and Peace" but why should an overlong study into the saga of human conflict, love and hope be better than an ode to bananas. Is death and love more artistic than still life? Perhaps it was the untold story: Napoleon ate a banana on the morning of the Battle of Waterloo - It just failed to make the final cut because it did not sufficiently 'progress the narrative'."

AH, "Beauty unappreciated" huh! He'd appreciated it pretty well last night. All night. Well, at least as long as his money lasted. Those girls rarely took a whole heck off a lot in any one go.

He glanced over his notes again, satisfied. He wasn't sure if it was Bell who'd invented the phone but it should have been if he hadn't. He made a mental note to find out. Then he ate a banana.

[edit] A

Bananarama was playing on the radio when Fred, the biggest cockroach in the house, slowly climbed the side of the fruit bowl.

It really was an ugly fruit bowl, thought Fred. If he took pottery lessons, he was sure he could make something better. And he only had 6 hands!

"Why is it that banana's are at the top of the fruit and vegetable pyramid and potatoes are at the bottom? Would the Irish have starved to death in their millions if they'd had bananas?" he asked Larry, the scrawny roach who had joined him on this nightly raid of the kitchen.

Larry the skinny Roach looked at his new friend and shrugged "I don't know Fred, but who would have built America if they'd had bananas?" he said as he scrambled over the bowl's side and landed on the furry surface of a peach.

Fred strained as he lifted his overweight body over the edge and into the bowl. (Conversation had to be suspended for the duration of this procedure.)

Fred could sense he was being poked fun at and puffed out his armored chest. He looked at Larry for a long time. Larry's eyes shifted left then right. Fred moved towards him quickly. Larry scrambled up onto the edge of the bowl.

"What" said Larry, terrified.

Gestalt reread the afternoon's work. Ok so it made sense. Of a sort. but it was hardly literature, was it? He decided to eat a banana.

'But then. What is the true definition of literature?' thought the warm penguin. "Can any one bird truly believe that they are infallible in their opinion? He mused as the antarctic wind whistled over the top of his head. "I think so. But at the same time not." said the penguin next to him as it made it's way from the warm center, back out to the exposed edge of the mass penguin hug. "Are you coming" it added "I have something to show you."

The warm penguin nodded and followed this mysterious penguin to the edge of the huddle. "so what did you have to show me?" he asked as the roaring wind tore into his back.

"This" said the other penguin as he opened his closed flipper to reveal a bright yellow banana.

[edit] N

Gina hadn't heard from Mark in a long time. She was growing tired of always playing second fiddle to his love of bananas and fishing. Fly fishing, night fishing, bloody fishing tv programs. She sometimes had nightmares of finding him in the arms of some giant mermaid, their embrace lit by the moon and she fantasized of a giant squid approaching the pair with the theme from Jaws thumping in the background. She would be holding a banana in her hand, and would hit him over the head repeatedly, while yelling, "BANANA! BANANA!"

She began to wonder whether he was worth it - his pursuit of the so-called Da Vinci cod seemed to be turning into a holy quest for him and a whole lot of crap for her. All she ever heard from him was his ideas on catching it- what wait he would endure, what new thoughts he would employ, what the fish was doing, where his mind was flowing. She sighed before hauling herself over to the pantry, where she contemplated their miserable selection of food with no small measure of depression: tins of fish, fresh fish and frozen fish. Just like this relationship: a type of pungent dread permeating the surroundings with a whiff of socks.

Nothing is worth this, she thought bitterly. Her stomach was rumbling and the apartment stank. She still couldn't figure out what Rollerson meant by the "Genesis project" but her hunger was making it impossible for her to think about that now. Cooking smells would do nothing to help, even if there had been more to cook than the fish.

She decided to order her favorite pizza, with extra anchovies. Gina had Carlo to thank for sharing that addiction. God. After that, she would go for a walk to clear her head and try and work out where this "Genesis" thing came in. She paused, phone in hand. For the first time she began to consider the anchovy thing. They were fish too. And, as with Carlo, perhaps they could help open a dialogue with Mark. Maybe lead to the same sort of obsession she had enjoyed with Carlo. Fishing, pizzas, the whole world outside their bedroom had ceased to exist for who knew how any days at a time. The slightly salty flavor on their tongues from much mutual probing of sweaty skin folds was echoed satisfyingly by the little anchovies on the delivered pizza Carlo had finally been forced to order as their energy waned.

Gina wanted the feeling of that time back. Nowhere to be, no-one waiting, nothing to do except revel in the joy of the now. Could it be with Mark?

Little James stopped typing. It wasn't only his character's stomach that was beginning to grumble, he realized. He remembered that George was supposed to meet him for lunch - or was that supposed to happen later? He couldn't keep track of things ever since he had shuffled chapters and re-ordered them in a vain attempt to provide an overarching theme to the work.

He fumbled for his cell phone and hit the quick dial.

"Jim, my friend, where are you?"

"Georgy, I used to think that as a writer I could do anything. Since it is possible to write anything one wants, the author is technically like a god, exercising absolute control over his or her characters and the events."

George sighed, "You speak in the past tense, Jimmy, why wouldn't you think that now?"

"Because it is not true."

"But you CAN write anything you want!"

"But even a 'god' is constrained by circumstance," James said with surprising passion, "I COULD write anything I want, but it won't ring true. The more three dimensional I make the character, the more I (or worse) the reader is likely to say, 'but Chad wouldn't DO that'. People can tell when the author is fucking with the character or the plot, they just know, it doesn't work. So I, as author, am so much less than a god."

"Yeah, yeah. So tell me this, Jim, are we doing this lunch thing or what?"

[edit] A

The familiar ebb and flow of pure golden happiness felt itself known and Carlo was back in his zone, his place, his reason for being. Ah, a rush of pure innocence...the floating, the weightlessness...NO NOT NOW...a change...being chased by black evil....insides burning. To go far, far away.

In an instant Carlo became aware that he was somewhere else altogether. Walking down a faintly lit but somewhat recognizable path he found himself outside his house. Not his current house mind, but rather the house of his adolescence. It hadn't appeared to have changed much - but it was 15? 20? years ago.

He took a banana out of his back pocket. It was still green. He preferred them yellow.

At that moment he heard it. The ring of the telephone. Not the digitized ring of today’s handsets but the telephony of old. The ringing became overwhelming, his spine tingling the way it used to in those long, hot summers of his youth when he waited by the telephone for someone, anyone, to call and invite him out, rarely daring to do the same for someone else.

He took the stairs up to the old patio pressing his ear to the door, listening. Now a shadow in the wings, menacing his silence. There was no answer.

It could have been seconds, minutes, hours later when Carlo felt the pain rage throughout his body, a pain that no amount of aspirin could fix. Culminating in a hunger so great, so terrific, that surely his stomach would turn in on itself.

Pushing himself up off the floor he surveyed the wreckage around him, cursing, knowing Sara always expected some order in the place by the time she got home, if she ever got home!. He wasn't convinced really that she would and was not sure if he really cared either way. But where to begin in this chaos? His stomach did somersaults.

Without another thought Carlo ventured to the kitchen to pillage the refrigerator. He pinned all hope on Sara having restocked the fridge before she left this morning?

Or was it last week?

He stood, fridge door ajar just enough to still see the light in the top right hand corner wink on and off as his body juddered against it in his misery. How long he stood like that, he had no idea. He never did now. Time had used to mean something. With Sara he had the time of his life, passed time, used time, abused it, wasted it, filled it, wished it away, ignored it. Now it weighed heavily, doing all those things to him.

The front door opened but didn't close again. As if to see better, he opened the fridge door fully, cool air caressing his shins. Standing in front of the almost empty shelves, he determined not to look behind him. Let her talk first, touch him. His eyes closed in anticipation so he was more than a little surprised to feel himself shoved aside as a bronzed and bulging bicep reached past his left ear for the last beer.

"Chad?"

" Yeah, yeah. I know, I know."

Carlo wanted to be a body trapped in an abandoned refrigerator somewhere in a dump way beyond the city and indeed looked to Chad as if he were going to crawl into the one between the sink and the vegetable racks in his kitchen.

"You promised."

"Yep. Sure did. Long time ago."

Chad hadn't enough grace to look embarrassed but he did look down at the beer in his hand.

Carlo wished he had clothes on but he doubted that would help in dealing with Chad.

"I'm telling Mom."

[edit] N

Chad Thompson had a hard, blunt banana that was typical of banana fanciers, and it had served him well in his adventures so far. He intended to keep it. He had tried variations - 'Chad T', 'Thompson, B' and 'The Big Chad' but none had worked. For now, he was sticking with 'Chad Thompson'. He wondered what his next adventure would be? A city would be novel, he thought. He'd taken on all the other clichéd locations - vast, snow-capped mountains, harsh, arid deserts, tropical beaches with blue waters and boys in shorts - maybe it was time to explore the urban jungle.

And then, an email arrived. It was titled Top Secret. He opened the email, checking over his shoulder that no-one was watching. He could never be too careful. He had learned that the hard way, in one of his previous adventures, when his blond companion had turned out to be a spy. And not that good-voyeuristic-spy type, but the bad-Russian-spy type. He would never make that mistake again. Whenever he finished making love, he would rise from the bed and phone for a dozen roses to be sent to their work, making sure they were marked from "a colleague". Better safe than sorry, he reflected to himself. Thinking wasn't his thing, action was.

He needed to decide what to wear on his upcoming adventure - he needed something that would allow him to blend in - but something that would also show off his arms. That was very important. He flexed one bicep, and kissed its round mound. He repeated with the other arm. And then the first again. It was several minutes before he could drag himself away from his own body, which made him more resistant than the lads in his life, he reflected wryly. He wondering what exactly 'wryly' meant.

He began to pack his bag. High-tech gadgets that would help him out of tight squeezes? Check. Items that seemed pointless but would prove important in an unexpected way? Check. Products that would allow him to fulfill his product placement obligations? He checked it off on his to-do list on his new (insert product placement here).

He left a note for his house-keeper, telling her that he been called away on a business trip, and that she should make sure she watered his plants, especially his Venus fly-trap. He was sure there was a double-entendre in there somewhere, but it wouldn't come, which may have also been a double-entendre, so he ignored it. Which reminded him - he needed to perfect some new snappy come-back lines - lines he would use when he had sex with villains in a variety of gruesome ways. Maybe he would use the time on the aircraft to work on them. Perhaps he could try them out on the airline steward? He started to grin wryly, but managed to stop himself just in time, nervous about doing too many wry things in one morning.

[edit] A

Meanwhile, across town, James was staring despondently at the first draft of his novel. "This isn't going well" he thought. He began to wonder why he started his novel with a quote from Sun Tzu and whether or not something would reflect in the eye of a dog. He doubted it, but it was a critical plot element. Not that he knew plot from a bull's foot really but what else were editors for? He sipped his smart rosé in contemplation. Maybe he would leave it in. He wasn't so happy with the way the character Chad Thompson was turning out. A real sly guy! Much like himself, James reflected. Only he pictured Chad to be sunburned, but white. Chad Thompson was not someone to be black.

"James," the bartender said, "There's a call for you."

James pushed his wine stained manuscript away and looked at the bartender, raising his left eyebrow. "For me? But everyone knows not to call me here."

"They're calling your mobile. How would they know you're at the bar?"

"Of course," said James, nodding meaningfully as he took the cell phone out of his pocket. Life had been so much better when they thought he was anywhere. Now he'd probably have to pretend to be somewhere anybody would want to be.

"Hello" said the voice on the phone, "Is that Small James?" Why would someone think he was with his Grandfather? Now nobody would wanna be there.

"No, this is Little James."

The caller hung up in Little James' ear. This angered James. His face was almost as red as his shirt. It wasn't a good idea to make Jim angry, as many had found out to their detriment, as he'd have a propensity to make wild accusations, and write about you adversely in whatever fiction/fantasy he would be working on at the time. James took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled his anger away. Maybe another beer would help? He reached into his pocket and drew out his wallet. Searching into it, he found only a few pennies, and an expired credit card. He knew he was supposed to have cut it up to focus on what he was going to do, but the hollow in his stomach just wouldn’t let him. A man could be many things but not without his black card, expired or otherwise.

He was hungry. Unfortunately he only had enough small change to order the margarita. Luckily, his adopted pleasure-withholding mantra allowed him to make such sacrificial choices. If he was honest with himself, though, he was actually starting to get some strange enjoyment from doing so.

"Sortez de mon lit de fleur!," his teacher had told him long ago. Initially, he'd been annoyed with his teacher's random sayings - these kind of white boy zen statements that had little impact on him, except giving him some great headaches - but he seemed now to understand this strange circular logic, especially since he bothered to translate the saying into some clarity.

"By withholding pleasures one heightens the enjoyment of that which comes naturally. But withholding pleasure too long can result in problems, not to mention constipation."

Shaken out of his reverie by the voice on the phone acknowledging his pizza order, he checked his wallet. He'd pay exact change of course; no tip, no nothing. James was a sneaky son of a bitch. Everyone knew that. Just like Brad Thompson.

He decided that it was time for Brad Thompson to get into some real trouble - time for him to show his chops! He picked up the manuscript, wiped the beer away, and dryly and mechanically resumed writing. "I must remember," he thought to himself, "to include absolutely no female characters of interest." He ate a sugar cube, then returned to the banana-reverie that was writing.

[edit] =

The front of the Neo café in Riga opened slowly and Chad Thompson stepped inside, eyes narrowing, scanning for suspicious looks. The place was darkish and decorated with green tones. Sitting at the bar was a big guy - more fat than muscle - but he looked like trouble. He was sitting with his back to him, apparently drinking and writing some sort of manuscript. Chad Thompson wondered what he was writing about, and why people would want to write, when there was so much to do!

And then, suddenly, Chad had an overwhelming desire to create trouble. He marched up to the big guy sitting at the bar, and tapped him on his shoulder.

James felt a tap on his shoulder. At last! The pizza had arrived. Turning around, mouth watering Pavlovianly, he extended his hand, exact change ready. But it wasn't the pizza guy - it was someone who felt strangely familiar to James, though he couldn't place where he knew him from. But he knew he was trouble - Little Jimmy had an instinct for trouble.

Chad Thompson snatched the paper from James's hand. "What is that? Some kind of message? Bananas?"

"Bananas?" James started. He started to stand, but Chad Thompson thrust his hand onto James's shoulder, forcing him to remain seated.

…..Little Jimmy glanced down at his manuscript, at the last line he had written:

Chad Thompson cracked his nuts. He felt like starting some trouble.

"Wait," said Little James, "you've made a terrible mistake, Chad."

"Ah, so's you know who I am! That figures!" The hand tightened on his shoulder. "I wrote all this," said James, and he waved faintly at the papers in Chad's hand.

"A fucking writer, eh?" Chad grabbed a handful of James's collar.

"Wait!" With the quickness of a professional coward, James scribbled out a line on the manuscript: Chad was in an indulgent mood; he'd hear this guy out.

The grip on the shirt loosened. "You're lucky," Chad said, "I'm in an indulgent mood. I'll hear you out."

James wiped his forehead and asked him to have a seat.

"I've come to meet Mikhael", Chad Thompson explained. "We can do it the easy way or the hard way".

James thought - why would he chose the hard way? "The easy way" he said . "Good man", said Chad Thompson , "Tell me how I can get a free banana... And I'll leave you to do your... dirty work."

James wrote the directions down. He handed the piece of paper to Chad Thompson who thanked him profusely, before leaving the bar, leaving James to his thoughts.

[edit] BANANA!

Meanwhile, across town, there was trouble afoot. The local take away shop had run out of bananas - and it was almost lunchtime! The owner, a surly man with a permanent stubble, yelled at his even surlier son to run down to the fruit market and buy some bananas.

"Hurry!" he said, "We must have bananas!"

Martin didn't much care for bananas, to be honest. He didn't like their smell, or the taste or the way the skin got stuck underneath his carefully manicured fingernails. He did sometimes, when no-one was watching, use bananas as a sex toy - but surely everyone did that!

Instead of heading to the fruit market, he decided to check out Hamburg's best night club only to be refused entry by the surly doorman. [1]

"Let me in," demanded Martin.

"Sorry sir, this is an exclusive club and you're not on the guest list," came the doorman's robotic reply.

"But you have to let me in!" exclaimed Martin.

"And why is that?" asked the doorman with growing impatience.

"Because I'm a fun guy," said Martin in a high voice with a smile.

"MMMMM," The doorman intoned. "If you are 'fun guy' naturally, you can come in. But if it's drug induced, then be off with you!"

"I'm high on bananas" exclaimed Martin indignantly.

"I'm sorry" said the bouncer, "I should have been able to tell by the banana skin under your fingernails!"

[edit] ___

"what was that?" Jim asked absentmindedly.

"I SAID that it is NOT TRUE," George repeated. He hated repeating himself, especially when the cause of the repetition was a man who could not admit that his hearing was poor.

"...So a community CAN write a novel?" Jim looked up with a skeptical expression.

"Yes, but only a humorous one."

"what the?"

"It is true. Although we all know the gravity of the human condition, I promise you it is humor that is shared by a community. We respect serious authors who write great globs of sad and dramatic prose because the natural inclination of us all is to laugh."

"Oh come off it." James objected, but he was starting to wonder.

"This will ONLY work if we move it into satire and humor," George insisted with great emphasis.

"You are serious aren't you!" James was amazed.

Enters Malcom. " oh jesus christ! slowly please" Malcolm was, had always been, a would-be man eater, but he was too lazy to produce much. Instead he just swallowed willing He shared Jim's views on how serious a business writing had become, but he also agreed with George's point of view : as French writer and philosopher Beaumarchais had once told King Louis the Fourteenth, "I'd rather hurry to laugh at anything, in case one day it would make me weep."

Laughter is what makes us different from the rest of the Animal Kingdom, it is said. That and a few other things, like making love face to face, or feeling emotions. Still, some serious things have to be formulated seriously, lest they lose their seriousness, and be turned to ridicule. Some things should reach our minds unadulterated. At least, that was Malcolm's take on things, so he was clearly torn between his attachment to George, who was his big brother after all, and James' logic, which he shared. This in mind, sitting quietly in a corner of the room, Malcolm watched the two older men argue, and resolved to write, for himself and for others. A few pages every day, all dedicated to an idea that had crossed his mind in the past twenty-four hours. The subjects would be, er, different, and in the end, Malcolm knew, this book of his would resemble a collage of short stories, but hey, you had to start somewhere.

Malcolm "Vac" Hoover reached for his notepad and pen. Time, it was a-wasting...

[edit] BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA! BANANA!

Orange?

Grape?

No, Banana! [2]

Continue in the next section here: Novel A Section 2.5