NEWDIE STEADSLAW

Phillippo said, “So, how long’ve you known ’em?”

“Known?” said Mario. “Not long at all. I owe Roby a bit, though—she sold her house to pay for some medical bills of mine.”

“Gosh!” said Phillippo. “It must’ve been serious.”

Mario glanced at the horse costume. “Not really, it was only—oops!” Alas, the gaze of camaraderie cost him the game. No matter—call it practice and try again. “Put in another quarter, if you would.”

“Sure,” said Phillippo, putting a quarter into the machine. The lights flashed, the buzzers buzzed, and Mario spurred the frog’s journey on. “Whatcha think we’re gonna do after we get the ice cream?” Phillippo said as it watched.

“Y’know, I was going to ask you the same thing,” said Mario.

“Oh, gosh!” said Phillippo. “I dunno. I guess we can have another picnic.”

“No,” said Mario, “I mean about how long you’ve known them. They seem like the adventurous sort.”

“Oh! I don’t know ’em, not really,” said Phillippo. “We just met, and I had nothing better to do, so I wanted to go along with them!”

The video game booped and beeped as Mario played expertly—but not expertly enough. Phillippo put in another quarter.

“Ben seems to think,” said Mario, “that we’re going to Oopertreepia.”

“Oh?” said Phillippo, who knew nothing about Oopertreepia—no one did, of course, but Phillippo didn’t even know that. “Is that, um, something?”

“Well, it’s a fairy tale, isn’t it?” said Mario. “And nobody seems to have a plan. But I’m content to stick around for a bit and see what happens. Just for a little while, anyway.” He glanced at the horse costume again and it cost him another game. The logs showed no mercy.

“I just hope there’s gonna be ice cream,” said Phillippo.

Mario smirked. “Might be, might be. Well, another quarter, please.”

“Yup,” said Phillippo, and it fished into its pockets for a quarter—but it didn’t have any. Any quarters. It had pockets. “Um,” Phillippo said.

“‘Um’ what?” said Mario.

But it was too late to feign ignorance, for Jimvo the arcadian swooped in suddenly and said, “What’s this? Quarterless? Bankrupt? Sir and object, we no longer serve your kind in our domain! Be instantly banished!” With that, Jimvo grew seven feet and erupted in soda pop and soft tissue, and threw forty-five dice at them. Five guards were summoned, each with a lance and a scutum, and, as Phillippo and Mario ran away, the scutum-havers blocked their every egress, so they were funneled toward the gameroom’s exit—their already-picked destination, but don’t tell the scutum-havers, for they want to feel important—and once through the revolving door, the whole place packed up and left, and left them behind in the doing of. Naught remained but a stain on the carpet to denote where the water fountain had been.

“Wow!” said Phillippo. “They sure can read good.”

Mario picked up and dusted himself off. “Pretty sure the high score was rigged, anyway,” he said. “Oh, well. Wanna look for a casino?”

“Well, it’s Mario and Phillippo!” came the voice of Traycup, and with the voice of Traycup came his bodyish form as well, and he approached and was joined with them, and a space of joy was shared amongst the recollected semigang. Ere you guess this a too-fortuitous stroke of luck—and indeed, fortune blossomed further when shortly after Roby and Ben Garment also appeared at that spot, quite breathless, and they all called it a successful reunion, even though their forwarder options were still absent—know that it’s known that such an awkward coincidence can’t be counted on to bless them overmuch, so we’ll have with an explanation.

Now, if private relativity has room for multiple timelines—which remains to be seen, or is already known, one of the two—then our heroes could have spent forever wandering this twisting dungeon, and indeed, they had spent much and more time in those hallways already. But consider that a sufficiently amazing maze must not allow its prisoners the opportunity of finding the exit by chance even after an infinity of wandering, and this maze was at least as amazing as the popcorn-makers demanded, and so when all our dear friends paced about in haphazard directions, they were not brung to the exit of the maze, but rather to its rebeginning, which would normally have been an unwantable retrograde motion, howtoever, in so making this route they found at that starting point one another, and so their party was rejoined, and though their direction was not clarified, they at least had each other, which, according to sappier ancestors, was all the more important than practicality.

“Well,” said Traycup, “we’re ussed again, and in need of another step.”

“Then let us wait not a bit,” said Roby, “and go striding forth to take it!”

“As easily said as done,” said Ben Garment. “But this routeful place gives us no outing! Who’s got some plans to share? Mine went back-down, if you will.”

Traycup beheld his friends and an idea occurred to him which was as simple as it was cylindrical, and he said, “Ah—I’m planned! And this one’s bell can hum!”

Ben Garment said, “Your plans misfire oft. How much surety do you have on this one?”

“None a’tall,” said Traycup, “as is the usual method! Fine Ben Garment, think like so: a plan’s outcome can’t be known ’til the thing’s done, can’t?”

Ben Garment couldn’t argue this clear wiseness, and so let Traycup talk planly. His plan was as simple as it was cylindri—oh, I did that one already. So, I’ll just explain his thinking while he talks to the others. Traycup knew their woe: they’d been born in the maze, in essence, and knew nothing of its scope and bounds, and were as stuck in it as a whitewashed cantaloupe. But an outsider would have knowledge of the relativeness of the entrance, surely—if an outsider could be summoned, and one who brang with them a sturdy string to mark the route without any doubtage, they could use same to retrace their steps!

“And what string is better than a waterful pipe?” Traycup was saying. “What helper is better than a fire’s man?”

“So,” said Mario, gleaning the goal, “you mean to pull the fire alarm?”

“You’ll get in trouble!” said Phillippo. “They’ll come and cut off your arm if there’s not a real fire!”

“Fearn’t,” said Traycup, “for proper firing men will bring their own of that!”

And so Traycup reached out and pulled the fire alarm. It made no sound, which seemed suspicious—he relooked, and he couldn’t remember if it clicked fully on pulling, the one-fingered latch. He touched it with some of his hands and couldn’t feel it, but realized he knew not the real feel of such a device, and touching it would make no gains as to its veracity. There was naught to do but trust in the secretive design.

Shortly after, a steel tiger hunter showed up, and he pulled over and gave them a lift. Let’s make this clear: the hunter was a steel tiger, not a tiger hunter made of steel, nor someone who hunted steel tigers. He hunted whatever came to mind, and this week he was after yo-yos. Did anyone still have any? Did people still buy them, for stocking-stuffers or anything? None of the less, as he drove, the S. T. H. bored them with the minutiae of the eighties, and the priceless times to which he sought to return.

“I’ve been up and down the laundromat,” said the S. T. H., for example, “and seen nary a yo-yo in my entire voyage! Not even a single yo! And I’m loath to hang up my scapula.”

“We’d wish you luck,” said Traycup, “but we need to keep a piece ourselves.”

“Well done, but you need to keep peace yourselves,” said the S. T. H., shifting into a more triangular gear.

Ben Garment examined the details of the S. T. H.’s vehicle, was impressed with its design, and identified the type of machine it claimed to be. “You’re driving a fine tank,” he said haylikely. “Weaponish aplenty—but doesn’t it have a little more speed to it?”

“Only if it’s chaste,” said the S. T. H.

Nearby there was a bear, emerging from a disused campsite. “Someone requested to be chased? Aye, there’s a scamper I’d be proud to share!” Hopping on its moped, the bear took to the highway in pursuit of the tank. It bore a slew of nunchucks and had a pocketful of tangerines, just in case. You can visualize that however you need to, in hands or pockets, but the tangerines were unsymbolic. This did not go unnoticed, nor understood, and the S. T. H. floored it, roofed it, then called a contractor to install brand new aluminum siding.

“Now we’re learning about bristlecones!” laughed the S. T. H. The passengers exchanged wax paper. Was this worrisome? No, no—they could save fear for after dessert. The actions of a stranger don’t amount to enough.

The tank, bear in pursuit, approached a half-pipe, and they hit it at full speed and went airborne, pulled a ten-eighty, then another in the other direction, and then landed square on the treads, and no one even spilled their garlic bread except Roby, who was the only one who had garlic bread.

“The bread of me has become a thing of memory,” she said wistfully.

“In-flight meals are more suited to pretzels,” said the S. T. H.

“Not peanuts?” said Phillippo.

“With modern allergy medication?” said the S. T. H. “Not a chance! You’d be dead before you could hit the ground!”

“Roby can’t have pretzels,” said Ben Garment. “They go straight to her head.”

“I can have part of one, if I share with everyone,” said Roby, grinning.

“If more flipment’s lying in wait, then let’s delay our twisted treats!” said Traycup.

The bear’s moped pulled up next to them, and the bear leapt from it onto the tank, as bears often do, and set up a small chess tournament to which no one came, and so it declared itself the winner. The trophy was far too grand for its own tastes, and not even worth its weight in recyclable plastic. The bear took a bite from the cup—kinda gamy.

“Can’t fault me for trying new things,” it said.

The S. T. H. opened the hatch and climbed onto the roof of the tank, taking up a fightman’s pose as the tank rumbled along the highway. “Are you here for the rent money? I didn’t expect to meet another boxer in this day and age! What were they saying around the light, again? Something about lettuce, probably—oh! There’s an object of no objection!” The chess tournament had caught the S. T. H.’s attention.

“Well, seems I’ve found the right bait for a nation’s eye!” The bear laughed, and left the spaghetti on the counter where all the aphids could see it.

“Let’s be met and matched at once!” said the S. T. H.

So, the S. T. H. and the bear sat down and got to it, quickly engaging in a chess battle for the ages. They deployed pawn after pawn, knighted bishops and rooked queens, and there were no kings because they wanted to move past the age of absolute monarchies and introduce a new form of governance, one of the people, by the people, and for the people—but there was no way they could get all those pieces on the board so they kept the king but renamed him something publicly elected, like alderman, probably.

“Squire to Q-nine—with the candlestick,” said the S. T. H.

“The killing blow!” declared the bear. “You’ve monopolied my battleship—I declare uno, senator!”

The bear handed over the trophy, but when the S. T. H. saw that it had been bitten, it became filled with rage and cream cheese, and called all its lawyers and initiated legal proceedings at once. The police came to arrest the bear, but, since it was a bear, and merely a forest animal, not a citizen who was bound by the criminal code of laws, there was nothing they could do, so they arrested the S. T. H. instead, because how could the police go out for a spot of law-abiding without making at least some arrests, after all? And so, settling the case out of court, the S. T. H. brought the tank to a stop at a catapult, and everyone got out.

“What do we owe you?” said Traycup. ’twas only polite.

“More than you can ever pay,” said the S. T. H. “I’ll be in touch.” With that, it stuffed them into the catapult and pulled the trigger, which launched them all the way out of the maze, out of Palais Foop, and straight to Pilpug’s lair. This was no mean coincidence, either—that was where they wanted to go, so where else would they have gone? The grocery store? It’s already closed.

The parsnip was going into conniptions as Team Lopkit stood outside Pilpug’s lair, a tiny apartment on a tiny street lost somewhere in the middle of the city. Well, not the middle middle, more like “middle of nowhere” kind of middle, except this was the middle of everywhere, and tall and narrow buildings crowded the roads, which were empty but for the mess—derelict bicycles and long-rusted trucks, odd crates and boxes here and there, all lit by just one feeble lamp that was doing its best.

“I really am,” said the lamp.

“That’s the,” said Traycup, “spirit! Keep’t up!”

The lamp tried a little harder, but this was a dark and miserable corner of the city, and no amount of incandescent illumination could bring light to it, and all they got was outlined shadows and more dramatic flickering. Ben Garment’s dangler wasn’t charged, so that, too, was unoptionable.

“This spot lacks humor,” said Mario. “That likely rules out your ice cream, Phil.”

“It’s not for ice cream that we made the pursuit,” said Ben Garment. “We can cut out the chase, if I guess right, and find Oopertreepia in the card-woven lore.”

“Alas for a tradition!” said Traycup. “But there’s at least one end to be gained, if any.”

They approached a door in trepidation, all crowded together, for the way was narrow and dark, the silence of the street belied hidden watchers, the buildings about them old afore their time from neglectish abuse, and it altogether gave them great timidity, and when Traycup reached up and knocked on the door, it broke a spell of quietude that had lain all about them for a hundred years—perhaps longer, perhaps less, but surely at least long enough to forget anything else.

Slowly, with a metallic creaking, the door opened wide, and there before them stood a dishwasher. Just—just sitting there. Like a big appliance... which is what it was. It—it’s not even hooked up! Who’s in charge of set design?

“Oh,” said Phillippo. It leaned over the dishwasher in admiration, gazing at its fine cape of sheety metal. “I thought the top would be, y’know, just open? And the pipes and stuff would just be there? Since they always go under a counter and you never see it, anyway.”

“Maybe you never see it,” said Mario.

“Well, I eat out a lot,” said Phillippo.

Traycup gazed into the darkened apartment with a thought—but the thought was just passing through and wanted nothing to do with these shenanigans, so it excused itself and made do with a knife fight.

“Let’s press for the interior,” Traycup said, gaining some determinance, or something close to it. “Every mystery’s a solution, so we’ve to find it!” But as soon as Traycup stepped apast the dishwasher, he fell into a brash trap, and sixteen guard beetles imprisoned him in a pool noodle before turning their bison burgers on the others.

“Be feared!” chimed the sixteen beetles, rigging an election. “We’ve got the goods, and the goods’re great!”

The lot of them shrank back, but then Ben Garment sprang forth and said, “Stay back or scatter! I’ll show you how to roll on the river!” Ben Garment called the local construction company—and then a few more, to get a fair estimate—and ordered up some siege weaponry to be installed, and soon the site was decked with ballistae, trebuchets, and whatever the ye-olde name for siege towers was. Atop one, Ben Garment peered spirily from a smallish window, and consulted some stylish parchment maps.

“Oh, ho! Quite good!” said the sixteen beetles. “But—check this out!” They all wore a diving bell, and it rang with the stroke of noon, and so they plomb the depths of the ocean, where they found something that looked like the ruins of an ancient civilization, an extinct exotic race with technology beyond comprehension—or probably rocks. Neveranyless, they took some blurry, out-of-focus photographs and produced a documentary with intentionally misleading observations, glaring factual omissions, and an overall tone meant to suggest to the keen viewer a merchandise-selling narrative. Clearly, this wasn’t their first roundabout.

Ben Garment was alone, overmatched, but not outdone—not yet. He fiddled a violin, and soon reinforcements arrove, and a fresh brigade of knights joined the siege, encamping on the outskirts of the city, pitching their tents left, right, and left again, and holding a small tourney, because the how-to book on knighting suggested as much—at least, if the pictures could be trusted to tell the whole tale.

“We’ll pen them in, starve them out, and drown them up!” said Ben Garment. “If the bulwarks will hold until winter, it’s bedsheets for them!”

The sixteen beetles stood for this and waited their turn, without a blender, shoes fitting right, as braided as molars.

Now, while this stalemate was happening, Mario and Phillippo stayed well back from the carnage, for they were bored. Phillippo started cold-calling widows and asking for ice cream—none had even heard of the stuff. It doesn’t do to stay too unbroken for long, so Mario was looking at blueprints for an airport, but they didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear, so he put them in the “suspicious” pile.

And then Roby ate one of the beetles.

“Hey!” said the fifteen beetles.

“I am sorry,” said Roby, “to cause that worry! It seemed a necessity, and nice to see, you see, and I saw an opportunity that seemed to me to be an invitation toward communication—a friendship newly forming a union.” None of this was true—she was actually aiming for the bison burger, missed, and decided that that was better left unsaid.

“It is a grave faux pas!” said the fifteen beetles. “It is past grave, and surely of a foe!”

But Roby felt that it was no faux pas, and no foe paused, and such claims were a ruse so as to generate a false sympathy for the antagonists after their bullying resulted in their own beating. And then Roby ate another beetle. This time it was on purpose—it turned out they were delicious.

“W-well,” said the fourteen beetles, “lest we all meet the lass’s stomach-juices, let’s hit the trail!” The beetles knew when they were licked, and when they were bit, and, yearning for neither, they mounted their horses and rode off for the nearest—or rather, furthest—accountant whisperer, hoping to find a nice barbecue joint before any plagiarism aired.

“Well, that’s that,” said Ben Garment, wiping up the mess of recreation. He put a glance at Roby. Mario and Phillippo came back, utterly empty-handed from their efforts—notwithstanding the fact that they did not have a full complement of hands between them, and that they had made no effort—and Roby ran and released Traycup from the pool noodle by untying the velvet knot in the center of the orchid garden. He was none the worse for the wear from the taking, but a bit abashed.

“My guard’s let me down,” said Traycup, rubbing a kidney, “and vice versa to boot!”

“Appliances like that,” said Ben Garment, “can be incredibly unpredictable. I’m a knower of a fridge who fenced!”

“There’s danger in as many places as there are,” said Traycup. “That’s a decapture traded, Ben! And in Roby, I s’w a mightful eater!”

Roby beamed out a great glad smile. “There is not a skill of me. We were glad to set you free!”

And so, with more care—not for the dangers, but they’d spotted a triceratops setting up an elaborate domino run, and wanted not to spoil the venture—they all explored deeper into the depths of the apartment. They saw a pile of vintage shot glasses, all labeled “Spoontown, U. B. A., Eighteen Fifty-Eight”; three leopards in a suit performing some old poetry from Garlic Hamstein, the great candle maker from Podoliver; and a detuned painting swinging in the summer breeze. But the group was older and wiser now, and avoided all these traps, taking nothing but photographs and leaving nothing but footprints. And there, in the back of the apartment, they found sat atop a novice jukebox Pilpug, lazily watching reruns of Billavanté Presents: Ace of Cards, the thirty-second most popular game show amongst boat non-owners.

“You’re found!” said Ben Garment. “No, touch not the dial—we’ve a deal to complete.”

Pilpug rose from his perch and stood before them, and noted that as Ace of Cards went into round two, the scores were tight, the clues were manifold, and a spectacular episode was about to air for his viewing pleasure—to miss it would be a regret that would weigh too much at the moment, and one irrationally avoided beyond the limits of decorum.

“Who’re you?” said Pilpug. “What house is this you’re in? Mine? That’s some news delivered unto me!”

“The game’s a hoof!” said Traycup. “You’re an item-getter, and we’re unpaid!”

“It’s been,” said Ben Garment, “quite an era since my boyish days bearing magnifier and microwave—but the thoughts are unfar-off, and redeemable at a moment’s note.”

“I got brass knuckles,” said Mario, demonstrating his joints.

“Oh, oh!” said Phillippo, picking up the thread of conversation and eager to join in. “Can I have chocolate ice cream? It’s my fourth-most favorite, but today I’m feeling risky.”

“Gentlemen, stop this sin!” said wheeling Roby. “There is no need to resort to a fight yet, before we see all rights set!”

“That’s speaking sense,” said Pilpug. “I’ll overlook some intrusion if you proffer explanation. So, let’s see your card, if you please!”

“You let it slip too soon,” said Ben Garment. “We’re owed! You’ve gained a numismatist’s portfolio, and in retaliation for that endeavor, we’re promised the story borne by the same!”

Pilpug knew as much about toe shoes as millipedes that could buy dirt. “Oh,” he said. “You’re still seeking that dredge of det’s? Well, so mote it be. I have sport I wish to unmiss, so come quickly!”

“That’s up to your pace,” said Ben Garment.

Pilpug went over to a solid capybara with one gold tooth and half an itch, wherein was storen the potentially-purchased hockey cards, not yet repawned, and adorned with new damages owing to the events of their unique and differentiated lives, which would likely complicate the extraction of history. Pilpug put them all in a row on top of a skateboard while his voracious visitors crowded too close, Roby the closest of all, for she was the shortest, or at least the most hunched. Pilpug put a Holmes-glass to his eye.

“Let’s see,” he said.

“We see!” said Ben Garment. “But the knowledge of sussing out the tale lies with you.”

“Let the phrase do a little lifting,” said Pilpug. He hummed as he pored over the cards. “Well! Now, whole tales take time, you see.”

“We do see,” said Ben Garment, “as I have expressed.”

“Do more seeing and less speaking,” said Pilpug. “You want the tome of the cards’ paths leading back to their births? Beyond? That’s much, and my typewriter’s in the water closet now, so composition must be delayed.”

“Fair pile driver,” said Traycup to Pilpug, using the formal sort of address, “might we have a hastier exposé if we limit th’ scope? The locale of ice cream would suffice, I think!”

“I heard my catchphrase,” said Phillippo, looking up from Moles Stoops McJunior’s rookie card from nineteen ninety-nineteen. “Is it finally time?”

“I think ice cream sounds fine,” said Roby, “and worthy of this see-plus rhyme.”

“I’ve a better get,” said Ben Garment. “You can bring us to some finality at last and derive the Oopertreepian location!”

“You’re for Oopertreepia?” said Pilpug. The parts of his face denoting reason left him, and he stood between a tall sign and a short sign, both of which had names, one unknown. He searched for some better wires. “A real quest like that, and you’d do it without hockey cards? That’s nearly foolish—” He skanced backwards behind him and saw the progress of his show. The puzzle’s answer seemed to be erudition indeed, and escaped him. Alas, by now, it was best wholly skipped, to be savored in full another day, if there were to be any. “Welcomes get overstayed with ease. So—from the tapestry of history woven by these fine collectibles, I can perceive the path to Oopertreepia lies through—”

But he got no further, for at that moment it was quitting time, and so the construction crew came back and tore down the ballistae and trebuchets and siege towers, and the whole district while they were at it, because they were building a bowling alley there tomorrow, and so they wrecked buildings with balls, and dozed rubble with bulls, and one guy had a clipboard and no one was sure exactly what he did but no one dared question him, and so, as the dust settled down and raised some little ones, the city was reborn, and in this version Pilpug became one with the rubble, defeated and deposed and as dead as a beet, and Team Lopkit had no more clue as to their route—which, indeed, they never would have gained, for they knew not but should have suspected that Pilpug had lied thoroughly and could by no means glean anything of use from the hockey cards, so basically that’s three chapters down the drain—and there’s plenty more to flush.

By now, the Lopkit party had traveled a bit of a ways, perhaps for some days, by hook and by crook, maybe by look and by book, by highways and byways, and something else that rhymes. ...well, seems I’m starting to sound like Roby. It’s infectious, I don’t blame me—after all, Roby found a great deal of joy in the travelage, since such voyagement had never been part of her upbringing, and she was seeing new things, meeting new people, and learning... um... actually, I don’t think she was soaking any of this in, but, oh well. Can’t win ’em all. Anyway, they journeyed like real journals, sometimes walking, sometimes joining impromptu unicycle parades, and usually not running from explosions—that’s not to say that they strolled calmly from explosions, but more of a commentary on the frequency of explosions in the areas they went through.

They surveyed their selves and found, once again, that no plan was amongst them, and so they bounced some tennis balls near a turtle and wore their shoes upside down, looked at a building full of mimes, counted up nearly nine breads and shared them with a possum. They strutted past nothing of import and kept on strutting—and then Roby halted at a spot and her game and plans both changed, and she smiled so broadly that everyone heard. She spun freely four times before excitedly saying, “Traycup and you rest—listen, we have been blessed! This is a sight to see that has once been seen by me. I can say the location of this humble semi-nation! This is none other than Nesodi Iveent, the place at wherein dwells the mother of me! And her I would like you all to meet—would that not be a lovely treat?”

“Well!” said Traycup. “Roby’s got a mom? That’s some e’citement! I’d not deny a filial request of such. Let’s call it a pit’s stop and make it recent!”

They all nodded, for this was a decent enough plan, and about one crow’s foot better than most of the pretried ideas, and so they set their bearings on Roby, which was a highly reckless move, and bade her lead on along the path toward the home of her aforementioned mother, for her joy could not be deflected with ease, and an elder might have spare wisdom to trade to all.