Excerpt


The speaker of the house rose to answer. The entire body quieted.

His voice boomed throughout the great hall. "Fellow members, time travelers and, J R Tolkheim. We hear your appeal. You are not the only ones who have come forward with appeals. The board and I have listened to similar requests for help and we have come to the conclusion that all of you are responsible for your own position in this. We warned all of you of the pitfalls of waste and wantonness. You did nothing to clean up your act or to consider contrition. In other words you snooze, you loose. How much plainer than that can I make it? Furthermore, you expect this body to go up against those who have separate issues with you over trivialities. We have promised not to be involved in your minuscule wars and petty strife. We have to look out for the larger population. We hope you understand. We have spoken."

"But sir, how are we to survive this dilemma if you won't help us?"

"You won't. It is survival of the wise. You didn't come in with us when we appealed to you to join our organization for total protection under one ruling body so why should we help you now? It is that simple. We have spoken and there is to be no more discussion of it."

"I would even pay for the federation to come to my aid." He was all but on his knees in supplication.

"Where were you when we asked for your help? Told us to put it where the sun don't shine, didn't you? We have spoken."

J R went home with his tail tucked between his legs. He did not know what he was going to do now. After some lengthy thought, he decided to call for his wizard. He was always full of ideas.

Merlin was very busy concocting his latest home brew recipe, calling it 'Kickapoo Joy Juice.' However, it had some very adverse effects on his gnomes who drank it. That was bordering on inhumanness to do so. At first, they turned flip-flops, walked backwards in circles, regressed to baby talk, and even cooed. Then they fell on the ground lifeless. He thought they were dead. He hated to do that to his little men. They were hard to come by and these four were all he had any more. What to do now? He would wait for a while to see if they were just sleeping off the effects. He hated to be bothered right now but his master was calling. His bell jingled and jangled impatiently. In addition, if he wanted to keep his bread and honey flowing he had better go see what his majesty wants. The poor, poor dear.

"What is it, your highness?" He kowtowed. This man was his king and he had better humor him that way or, he would know his wrath.

"I have a problem." Roared the round guy.

He always had a problem. Damn it anyway. He probably wants me to cast a spell on some body or, to wash out their mouth with soap for cursing him.

"Can I help O great one?"

"Yes. Tell me what I can do. I have provoked the warring factions of Harry Porter and he has decimated my kingdoms just for spite. He does not wish to farm or explore the lands for minerals but he just wants to deprive me of property. What am I to do? In addition, the World Federation Organization will not help us. We will go down in defeat if we don't do something rather obtuse and spectacular."

"Hmmm. This is serious. Let me ruminate on it. I will give you an answer on the morrow."

"Well, don't take any more time than that. This is costing me more and more land each new day to say nothing of all the tons of drachmas. I do not like it one bit. Do you understand me?" He shouted.

"I do, O venerated master."

In between, his brewing vats of 'Joy Juice' and spells, the grand wizard put all his mental efforts toward his benefactor's problem of having his kingdom robbed of him. Even the sexophones wailed like the melodious cats of this brave new world. Aldous Cruxley would have turned over in his tomb for this.

Merlin thought he might get by with conjuring up a force of goblins and vampires to assault Harry Porter. However, after consulting with his crystal seer he found he did not have enough sand to make the creation large enough. Grains of sand were even hard to come by these days, he mused. "How about bad weather?" he barked at the crystal. "If I sent a few bolts of lightning to burn his houses and produce hailstorms would that do it?" The glass winked back at Merlin that there was a great possibility in that. He immediately went to J R Tolkheim, reporting his idea. Got an affirmation.

Therefore, from his highest tower he invoked the nether worlds and unleashed enough bolts of energy into the skies to create a massive turmoil to storm for twenty days and twenty nights. It raged and raged and it was not fit for man nor beast to be out in the weather around the kingdom of Harry Porter. And any protection was negligible except for the caves that he went to live in. In the end very little was accomplished in the way of destruction of the enemy. The energy bolts wore off, the warmth of the nine suns of Jupiter came out again, and things returned to normal. As normal as normal could be and was not.

Next Merlin tried insects. However, when he unleashed those on the kingdom of Harry Porter he created such a wind to carry them that they blew right on by, around the planet, and back to his land. Then he had to create a repellent to kill them with that it stunk to high heaven.

"I don't seem to get anything right these days." He bemoaned those facts to his master, J R Tolkheim.

"Why can't you send some kind of disease that will kill them off?"

"That would be well and good except that we may suffer the same dilemma."

"Dammit all, war is, after all, the universal perversion. We are dictated by it. If we can't experience our perversion first hand we spend our time fantasizing with the pornography of war stories."