Some Prank

   Jack walked toward the adjoining coolers, typing distractedly on an electronic device.  His path intersected with that of Fil's.

   "Hey, try 'comic pi tiles,'" offered Fil sardonically.

   Jack's chuckled response quickly grew into a high, loud laugh fed by a growing but desperate feeling of mirth.

Kramer's Dream

   Jack stood with Eeyore on a raised platform situated in the middle of the large, white cubic room.  Two narrow ledges ran along opposite walls.

   "I can't find the door, where is the door?" said a frantic voice.  Jack looked to his left to see Kramer running along the ledge. 

   "It's okay, just look over there for the door," offered Jack helpfully as he pointed to his right.

   Kramer ran off towards the far wall.  Upon reaching the end, he disappeared into an adjoining hallway, only to reappear a moment later on the opposite ledge.  Again he ran the length of the wall towards a small door.  Seized by the moment, Jack jumped off the platform to join Kramer, landing on and destroying a small construction in the process.  He eagerly followed Kramer through the door and into a series of hallways that lead the pair to another set of doors.  Kramer gingerly pushed open the double doors, revealing a small, empty gym with small, high windows set near ceiling.  This was when Jack realized he was inside Kramer's dream.

   Freed by this realization, Jack began to prance around the gym.  Other people appeared and joined him as he ran in a circular pattern.  He recognized Petunia, and someone that might have been Lana.

   "You have to pretend you're in his dream," Jack explained to the others.  To highlight his point, he started to skate on the gym floor, despite the absence of ice.  After gaining some speed, he closed his eyes and launched into a flying, spinning leap.

   "Oh my gosh, Jack can do that!" someone gasped.  Encouraged, Jack executed another twirly jump, his inertia carrying him through more revolutions than he could count.

   "Can you reach the chandelier?" another person asked.

   Jack wanted to include Eeyore in the joyful proceedings.  He left the gym and found a different door into the original cubic room.  There, where Jack had left him on the pedestal, sat Eeyore.  Slightly closer to the door, bent over a desk with his back toward Jack, was a youngish man with long, shaggy hair.

   "Hey, Eeyore!  Want to join us?" yelled Jack.

   Eeyore turned slowly toward Jack and said, "No."

   "Ok," said the shaggy-haired man.  Realizing that the young man was probably Eeyore's voice actor, Jack scanned the room suspiciously and found several other sly individuals that were also suspected voice actors.  Jack started to jump and leap crazily around the room, simply for the joy of jumping and leaping.  The room and hallway started to fill up with chairs and people, but Jack didn't mind; they provided more obstacles for him to dodge around and duck under.  His joy increased as he fit between extended arms and under chairs, though narrow spaces created by intertwined limbs and clusters of conversing people.  As he leaped and jived back toward the gym, Jack thought he heard someone say his name, but he couldn't be bothered to investigate.  He was having too much fun.

   Jack returned to the gym door and opened it to find a formation of mostly girls dressed in spandex dance outfits.  It appeared they were poised to begin a show!  Overeager and flush with the excitement of jumping, Jack shouted, "Five, six - "

   "Five, six, seven eight!" interrupted Niel from the back of the chorus line.  She shot Jack a perturbed look as the girls started dancing to the music.  Jack, a bit abashed, slid into the gym to watch the show.

   Halfway through the performance, a drummer entered, stood in the doorway and started to drum loudly with the music, but he quickly lost the tempo and pulled ahead of the beat.  He pulled back but still seemed to have trouble staying in time, and it was tripping up the dancers.  Jack wondered if the drummer couldn't hear the CD or if he just had bad tempo, and if that were the case, how it played out in the marching band.  Perhaps the band's tempo fluctuated without anyone realizing it?

   As the show neared its end, Petunia and a man struck a pose on wobbly platform.  They started to ascend unsteadily toward the ceiling.

Metropolitan Accident

   Jack rolled down the exit ramp on his bicycle and into the labyrinth of overlapping highways and bridges that constituted the busy metropolitan education district.  He only made it a short way before his progress was halted by a collection of firetrucks and police officers.  It appeared some catastrophe had occurred.  The authorities were setting up ropes and redirecting traffic as a somber crowd gathered.  Jack walked his bike through the crowd toward a detour bridge.  He noticed one man in the crowd crying.

   He quickly arrived at the bridge to find that it, too, had been blocked.  More curious than annoyed, he turned to a woman nearby and asked what had happened.

   "There was a couple, walking along the bridge, and they stopped to look at that industrial complex.  The woman was leaning over the edge, and all of a sudden, the man was in a locked position, holding her, trying to pull her back up.  She was partway into the smoke column, and you could see him trying to swing her out of the way," she replied.  Jack considered this for a moment.

   The woman lifted her nose and sniffed the air.  "Mmmmm, smells good," she remarked.

   Jack looked down at the flat area below and to the left of the bridge to see a large, circular grill where many chunks of chicken and beef sizzled.  At first Jack was horrified that the authorities would set up a grill after two people had lost their lives, especially considering the manner.  But then he thought that it might serve to distract the public from the atrocity.  At any rate, Jack would have to find another bridge to cross.

   "You could try back tomorrow," offered a police officer apologetically.

   "Sure, sure," said Jack.  He didn't want the officer to feel bad for inconveniencing him.

   "Well, actually, probably not..." said the officer.  Jack nodded in understanding.

Newspaper Slaying

   Jack ran to the edge of a narrow gully in the sparse forest.  Looking down, he saw the blocky newspaper cube that was assaulting one of the villagers as the others looked helplessly from the sidelines.  Jack fired a gun at the beast, followed in rapid succession by an arrow and a throwing knife, before jumping down on top of the newspaper cube's back.  The attack knocked the cube over, allowing Jack to quickly slay it and begin to rip it into strips.  Now that the danger was over, the villagers walked slowly inward to observe.

Office Social

   "We really needed that promotion!  We can't stay here our whole lives!" said Lakme desperately.

   "Why not?" queried Gunther.

   Jack looked over at Erin, who sat in a comfy corner chair.  She'd had several drinks by now, and was becoming slightly intoxicated.  She grinned happily at some joke from a nearby girl.

   "She'll probably be embarrased tomorrow," said Jack, thinking about her generally mild personality.  Andy, who was snapping pictures, seemed particularly amused by the whole situation.

   "You don't pay attention to me when someone else comes along!" Sarah said angrily to Andy.

Nuanced Media

   The encyclopedia enveloped Jack's vision, was Jack's vision.  Entries scrolled by, and although Jack wasn't reading he had implicit knowledge of their contents.  They were written naturally, but not about any topic in particular.  The information contained was very important, but each entry had to be experienced, not just read, in order to understand how it was written and its deep relevance.

   Alongside each entry was a caricatured figurine of the entry's author.  Jack recognized Emilio and decided to look himself up, under a false name.  Upon finding no results he realized it was probably under his actual name.  He decided to see if there was anything by Moptop.

   Before his search yielded results, Jack's attention was drawn to a video streaming from the internet.  It showed a chair set up in front of a kissing booth.  On the chair sat a cartoon reindeer dressed as Santa Claus, and on that reindeer's lap sat another reindeer.  The video rolled, the captions scrolled by, and the two reindeer began to kiss and fondle.  The video indicated that Target had leaked a wine shipment, and the deer never could drink just one.  Before too long, a man burst from out of the colorful plywood backdrop of the booth, chasing away the canoodling deer in the process.

   "What's that guy doing?" asked the man loudly, pointing at something offscreen.

   Another, higher-resolution video began.  It appeared to be scenes from a beach party, complete with loud commotion and a roaring bonfire.  The cast of "Lost," as well as other celebrities such as Pamderson and Brispeers, were in attendance.  The party seemed wild, for the footage was unsteady and out of focus.  Suddenly it appeared that the camera person had fallen; the vantage point dropped to the sand, revealing a lot of rolling around.  Someone yelled "Hey, this trivia, it's not legally binding!"

Girl Talk

   Jack and Nealsonic navigated through the water-filled channels that laced the blocky play city.  The sky overhead was even and dark, as if a giant lid covered the area.  They were returning to a site that they'd just left, for Nealsonic was troubled by deeds undone.

   "I think I need to talk to her," said Nealsonic desperately.

   Jack considered this carefully.  "Well, if that is the way you feel, if you'll really regret not talking to her, then...I think you need to do it." 

   Nealsonic nodded somberly and climbed out of the channel towards the girl's door.  Jack stood in the water, looking ahead, slowly realzing the gravity of the situation and wondering how it would affect Mandersala.

Graduate City

   Floating high in the sky over the sea, Jack gazed out of a giant window in the hallway of the floating building at the coastal town of Madison.

   "It's quite beautiful," he remarked casually to the adjudicator, hoping to appear friendly and social.

   "Yes, quite beautiful," replied the adjudicator. 

   A girl entered, and Jack started to make small talk with her.  As a newly admitted graduate student, he would be studying and playing alongside her.   Jack had tremendous difficulty talking with his retainer in, further hindering his clumsy attempts to appear sociable.

   "Well, I look forward to playing with you," he said cheerily.

   "We don't know if we'll be playing together yet," she replied somewhat coldly.  A young man appeared, another student, and Jack talked to him too, but only about trivial things.

Lego Trip

   Jack sat in the back of the conversion van, growing steadily more upset.  Giant sunlit mountains and golden forests rolled past outside his window, but despite the beauty, he was frustrated.  This wasn't the way to do it.  He'd wanted to drive himself, to get a sense of distance and grandeur from the journey.  Riding in the back voided that effect, and he desperately wished there was some way to go back and make the trip again.  This wasn't the way to drive to Colorado.

   Narin drove the vehicle towards their destination while Floom sat in the passenger seat.  This was another element.  Jack knew the girls were to stay at Floom's house, but he had his heart set on staying in a hotel.  He imagined how the conversation would go:

   "Well, we're here," Narin would say cheerily, "hey Jack, where are you staying?"

   "I thought I'd stay in a hotel..." he would reply.

   "Oh...well, you know, you could probably stay at Floom's house."

   "Yeah, you could stay at my house!" Floom would pipe in.

   "Oh, no, that's not necessary..."

   "Really, I'm sure it would be no problem!" Narin would say, and Jack would be stymied.  As he pondered the problem in the van, he thought that perhaps he could explain how it was important for him to stay in a hotel, to experience it by himself.

   Jack pulled out his legos and Narin and Floom crawled back into the passenger section of the van.  He began showing them his constructions. 

   "And this," he said, pulling out what he thought was a spaceport, "is a...oh, a shop."  He started placing boards together to form a small town.  A half-built space shuttle caught his eye as something the girls might be interested, though he wondered why it wasn't fully built.

Theme Song

   Jack, Moptop, and two other people gathered around the piano; it was time to sing the theme song from "All in the Family."  The other two sang the first line, followed by Jack and Moptop.

   "Linda Ronstadt sang a song," crooned Jack and Moptop.  The other two finished with the third line, and all four sang, "Those were the days!"

   Jack was worried; he didn't know any more lyrics, and his positioning prevented him from seeing the sheet music.  Panicking when it was his turn, he sang, "I don't think I know the words."

   "Nor do I but that's ok," sang one of the other two.

   "We'll just make them up, I s'pose," sang Jack.

   "Those were the days!"

Sheepdog Pursuit

   The car Jack was driving swerved up alongside an embankment and skidded back down onto the road before turning into a small sheepdog named Vernon.  The dog bounded happily around the congested traffic, his white gossamer fur flopping comically in rhythm with his frolicking   Vernon joined a nearby cadre of sheepdogs that were busily engaged in ascending the steep embankment in pursuit of a man.  Jack watched as his sheep dog leaped twenty feet into the air, and his heart swelled with pride that his dog could jump the highest.

   This advantage allowed Vernon to reach the top of the hill first, and he stopped briefly to get his bearings.  The other side of the hill dropped gently into a calm, blue ocean, and the distance between the hilltop and the beach was occupied entirely by a sea of golden wheat plants swaying gently in the breeze.  At the bottom of the hill, floating in shallow water near the beach, sat a caravel moored to a small dock.  It was towards this ship that a man was sprinting down the hill.  This was the man the sheepdogs were after.

   By this time the rest of the dogs had reached the hilltop, and the whole troupe barked as they descended the hill in pursuit of the man.  He had reached the ship, untethered it, and because of his haste had opted to extend the mainsail even before he fully left the dock.  Jack, observing the proceedings, thought this to be unwise.

Royal Succession

   The negotiations concerning the throne would soon be underway.  All that was left was for Jack and Gunther to decide where they would take place.  They had narrowed it down to the back area of the produce department, lights on their low setting.  The entrance would be roped off but with enough space for the crowd to observe the proceedings.

   "But, they won't be able to hear through the cooler, because of the doors," pointed out Jack.

   The kingship would be decided by four tasks.  The first task began as a submerged boy was pulled up and out of his water-filled tank.  He answered the questions somberly but with confidence and a strong sense of worth.

   As the fourth task was set to begin, Jack knew that he was in the lead, he just needed to win this last race.  The starter pistol fired, and Jack's perspective became two dimensional.  He watched himself recede back into the horizon, jumping over the small bumps to easily pull ahead of the pack.  It was a simple task to finish first, and he sat down near the finish line to watch the other racers arrive.

   "Did anyone else go into 2-D?" he asked someone nearby.

Once everyone had congregated, he nodded to Gunther.  Although Jack had scored the highest in all four tasks, Gunther would become king.  After they finished discussing the details, Jack settled back into the couch, relieved that he would not be responsible for the work ahead.  He heard Gunther preparing to start the fire.

Battlestar Apartment

   Jack crouched down against a stack of pillows.  Although an uneasy truce had settled between the Battlestar Apartment and the enemies within the city, Jack still felt the need to hide from passing patrols.  He looked warily out the window at the midsized frigate drifting lazily between the skyscrapers.  The frigate was armed with an x-ray scanner that allowed it to see into the Battlestar Apartment; this made Jack uncomfortable, even though they probably weren't going to use it. 

   After the patrol floated out of sight, Jack got up and walked over to where some of the crew where having a heated discussion.

   "Look, neatness is really not the issue, it's just not a prioity..." argued one of the officers.  Jack looked around the small apartment.  It was indeed rather messy; piles of pillows and blankets were layered along the glass walls, but it was clear some effort had been made to tidy.

   Suddenly an alarm sounded.  "Alert!  Proximity alert!  Scramble all AG-1 fighters!"  Jack ran over to the suit station and began to fiddle with his helmet.  He had meant to practice suiting up earlier, but it was too late now.

   The fighters shot out of the Battlestar Apartment and formed up.  They immediately joined formation with a cruiser and some fighters of the same faction with which they had formed a truce.  Now was a time to put aside old hatreds; there was a new threat to deal with.  They reached a relatively open square of the city, and battle was joined.

   Jack saw that Starbuck had pinned an enemy fighter against a building, but she was struggling to hold him there.  He noticed that she was wearing only her helmet, so eager to get into the fight that she'd neglected to put on her flight suit.

   "How like her," thought Jack.

   She seemed to be losing her grip on the pinned fighter.  One of her wing mates flew in and added his strength, and together they held the enemy fighter firmly against the building.

Freezer Lesson

   As Jack placed the mini popsicles back in the freezer he noticed another freezer compartment below the one on top of the fridge.  He pulled the door towards him to discover a brighter but empty space.  Having found nothing of interest, he tried to close the door but found that it had somehow warped and it was too small to slide into the shallow grooves that would form an airtight seal.  This wouldn't do; he'd have to call Nealsonic.

   "Hello?" said Nealsonic over the phone.

   "Hi, Nealsonic," replied Jack.  "I'm calling because I tried to open this door, and now it won't close."

   Nealsonic sighed in annoyance.  "I told Saddy there was no problem."

   "I know," said Jack, "I just wanted to make sure it would be okay."

   "I already called her and told her it wouldn't leak, air can't get in through those small channels."  Jack examined the compartment and found a trapezoidal pattern of tiny tunnels that might funnel warm air into the freezer, but they were blocked by a plastic membrane and so posed no problem.  He understood Nealsonic's frustration; Saddy was no doubt fixated on these air channels.

   "Yeah, I see the channels - "

   "I already told Saddy about it."

   "Yeah, Nealsonic, I know, I was - "
 
   "They're blocked up, it can't raise the temperature in the compartment.  She KNOWS that."  Jack could feel anger creeping into Nealsonic's voice, mounting anger for which Jack might've inadvertently become a catalyst, but he knew it was directed primarily at Saddy and the general situation.

   "Nealsonic, listen, I was the one who broke the door, not Saddy."

   "Jack, Saddy already know's it not a problem.  I ALREADY TOLD HER.  I'm so sick of dealing with it, I"m sick of it!" yelled Nealsonic.

   There was a brief silence on the line before Jack said, "Bye, Nealsonic."  As he clicked off the phone he thought he might've heard Nealsonic say something, but he couldn't make it out.  He sat down at the table in the dim kitchen and stared at the broken compartment where Nealsonic was teaching.  He heard two loud, angry yells emanate from inside.  Jack knew Nealsonic was just venting.

   As Jack stared at the compartment, he saw Nealsonic calm down and begin the lesson again.  His student, a strangely attractive but cartoonish ceramic girl, sat facing out.  Jack's vision began slowly zooming in on her face.  Her smile held a coy mixture of contentment and seduction, but it was clear she was putting on a front, that she was upset on the inside.  She blinked and continued trying to smile as Jack zoomed in further, her face taut with conflicting emotion.   Her brave expression wavered for a moment, and Jack thought he detected a tear glistening in her eye.

Over Limit

   "Stop!  Kneel down and put your hands on the car!" shouted the female African-American police officer.

   "Like this?" asked Jack as he knelt down, put his hands behind his head and touched his forehead to the passenger side window.

   "Yes, like that," said the policewoman.  Jack looked at Montano, Petunia, and Gunther standing around the hood of the car.  The fading light of evening cast long shadows over the parking lot, revealing people milling about, getting ready for some event.  Jack stood up.

   "You all drank, what, 36, 37k?" asked the police officer.

   "Yeah..." replied Jack.  "We're not driving, we're just standing around the car."

   The policewoman handed Gunther a breathalyzer.  He began to fiddle with it.

   "What should we have done?" asked Jack.  Somehow he wasn't concerned.  The policewoman gave a sidelong glance to two men that had walked up to watch the scene.  They smiled with contempt at Jack's ignorance.

   "You could've gone to the Nueu," she said, pointing off into the distance.  "They open around 9!" she proclaimed with exasperation.  The two men chuckled.  Jack didn't see how that was a solution.  Gunther, having finished with the breathalyzer, handed it to Petunia.  Jack leaned up against the side of the car to wait for his turn.  The policewoman joined him.

   "Did you see, they're having a festival here?" she asked, trying to make small talk.  People in the lot had begun to move around to engage in festival activities.

   "Yeah, we saw the pile of fireworks on our way in," replied Jack.  He noticed one of the festival dancers carrying a red cello case on his back.  He didn't think it was safe to have a cello so close to fireworks.

   "Hey look, a cello," he said to the policewoman.  "We could've played a duet!"  She smiled politely.  They sat silently for a time.  She looked tired, like it had been a long night.

   "You don't seem too intoxicated," she commented.

   "Yeah, I don't feel intoxicated either," he replied.  In fact, he felt completely sober.  "Though, I guess I can never tell.  Heh, that's probably not good, huh?" he said, chuckling lightly.  She gave him a severe look before taking a deep breath and sighing.

   "You don't like it this way, huh?" Jack asked.

   "No," she said.

   "You prefer the snappy, speed trap method?" 

   Their conversation was interrupted by Montano, who handed Jack the breathalyzer.  Finally it was his turn.  He held it up to his face, unsure of how to proceed.

   "Do I breath into this part?" he asked the policewoman.  She nodded yes.  He took a deep breath and exhaled, registering a .100 on the display.  He continued to inhale and exhale, bumping up the reading to .200, .300, .400, .500 with each breath.

Recall Efforts

   "Let's see..." pondered Jack.  Then he remembered it.  Cette!  He wrote "cette" on a piece of paper.

   "I was coming from the cette..." continued Jack, trying to remember the events and how he would phrase them.  Vague, asynchronous memories flitted around in his mind's eye, something about a back office, something about a hole over by where the makeup aisle bordered the grocery section.  He flipped up a small, electronic device out of its slot.  The effeminate male that had accompanied him stood talking to a group of people.

   "I only shake hands with people I'm close to.  I'm sick," explained the effeminate male.  Jack looked at him, trying to remember they'd shaken hands.  The young man offered his hand, which Jack shook with some discomfort.

Mana Pile

   "Inspect this mana, see if there is any impurities," said Richotnik.

   Jack looked carefully at the large, spread-out pile of salty, white material.  "I don't see anything in it," he said.

   "Well, the green things.  Riattz would want me to count the green things," said Richotnik with a hint of nostalgia. 

   Jack noticed the small, green balls resembling bath beads mixed in with the mana.  "So, what do these green things do?  Do they turn it green?" Jack queried.

   "Ok..." said Richotnik with an upswing in his voice, raising his eyebrows in impatience and sarcasm.  He knelt down and started to move bits of the mana around in the pile.  The girl standing in the pile eyed Jack; it was clear she didn't think much of him.

   Richotnik stood up and walked over to the edge of the pile in a businesslike manner.

   "This will expire in three days," he said.  "Task: take today, add three days, calculate the day it will expire."

   "You want to do it?" Jack asked the girl.

   "No," she replied.

   "Let's both do it, then we can check our work."

   "Pfff!" she scoffed.

   Jack started writing down the days on a piece of paper.  "Let's see...Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday..."

   Richotnik and the girl laughed derisively.

Star's End

   The heavens churned with fire and wind.  Multicolored infernos formed into spinning spheres that swirled chaotically before bursting into bright, glaring showers of light.  The landscape outside of Jack's house was cast in late afternoon luminescence, despite the cataclysm overhead.  The Earth's sun was dying.

   Jack sat on the couch in his living room, transfixed by the events outside.  He could tell by the escalating activity that the sun would soon explode.  What little attention he could spare was directed at the TV, which was tuned to the series finale of "The Simpsons."  He noted that the sun in the show was also exploding, and could not decide if this was a creative move on the part of the show's producers or if the whole idea of trying to compete with Sol's time slot was stupid beyond measure.

   His thoughts were cut short by a monumental effusion of white light, signaling the last, greatest output from the dying star.  The explosion sent jets of fire and hurricane winds outward, blowing out the windows of Jack's living room.  Air elementals reached through the breach, their insubstantial arms grasping in vain for Jack, who quickly retreated further into the house toward The Father.  The two stood, watching the elementals.

   "Well, that's a good sign, I guess," commented The Father.