Look Here Motherfucker Who You Jivin' With That Cosmik Debris?

Some Of My Best Friends Died Ludicrously During The Current Ice Age

Chapter 24

Isolde was killed in Germany by a meteorite the size of a pinto bean.

Three months after the death of Lickety-Split, she had gone to the PX and used her dependent ID card to purchase two gross of assorted pot pies. Through a typically insane error in paperwork, Wayne had become a Spec 4 in the reserves, despite his dishonorable discharge.

Isolde loved Swanson’s pot pies. No one knows why. She had badgered her parents unmercifully about the merits of these tasty and tiny stew-filled pastries, but after three months of her best browbeating she hadn’t managed to get them to buy (much less taste) one.

So Isolde had finally taken matters into her own hands after watching Fox News, and now, arriving home with the trunk crammed with microwavable dinner pies, Isolde reminded her parents of their favorite saying: Waste not want not. She laughed as she said it, knowing now they’d be forced to try this great new food, because that’s the American Way.

Fifty minutes before dinner, Isolde placed three frozen hearty beef pies in a preheated General Electric self-cleaning oven. Then she lounged on the sofa to watch the six o’clock news where peace threatened once again to break out in Central America and the Middle East. If this idea was disquieting to the West Germans, it bothered the bejeezus out of their allies.

When the timer went bing, Isolde arose, saying: “Now you are in for a real treat-tasting tempt delight.”

Yet within seconds, tragedy struck. For at the precise instant Isolde opened the oven door, nature took it upon itself to demonstrate this strange thought: Not all Sir Isaac Newton’s laws had been rendered obsolete by the atomic bomb.

As this peculiar thought took hold of the author, a tiny particle of matter from deep space punctured the aluminum siding of the Schiene’s double-wide manufactured home. It struck Isolde’s right temple with such ferocity that when it exited below the left shoulder, Mrs. Trout’s head exploded, and her upper torso was splattered around the kitchen.

The faint aroma of charred meat lingered in the household for days. Much of this odor could be traced to three Swanson’s pies that burned in the oven for an additional 90 minutes while police pored over the premises for evidence of foul play.

At first, authorities believed Isolde was the latest victim of the Autobahn Killer who had claimed several dozen lives in recent months in a series random snipings. Later, two researchers from the Smithsonian Institute were called to assist in the investigation when the military coroner could not positively identify the make of the “bullet” dug out of the Schiene wainscoting. Detectives suspected it was Japanese since the metal of which it was cast had never before been seen in Europe.

The Smithsonian paratechnicians concluded that the projectile to which Isolde succumbed had been zinging around the saddle-shaped void for 25 billion years. And while the universe had no generally-accepted form in preglacial society, the popular scientific media routinely advanced the notion of a cosmic saddle until John Wayne and Old Rummy Reagan finally died. Materex claims the universe is shaped like a backgammon board cut from a block of ice.

***

Oh yes, the ice. The ice is beyond description, beyond comprehension, even beyond belief, although the Ethiopians had a word for it. Some argue ice is a blessing in disguise since it is the solid state of water, which also occurs on Earth in gaseous and liquid forms. Only on Earth does water exist in quantities sufficient to support life, and ice, after all, is the form in which nature most frequently stores fresh, drinkable droplets.

No one doubts for a moment that the greatest portion of Earth’s fresh water was (and still is, for that matter) tied up in the polar ice caps, nor that those polar regions were the only areas on the face of the planet where precious and life-sustaining water persisted in all three physical forms all year round. No one can argue with the facts, but what these Pollyannas invariably fail to mention is this: to even a marginally sane inhabitant of this planet, living at the North or South Pole was more than an unappealing idea. It was just short of impossible, like living on Mars, and nobody lived on Mars. Nobody at all.

***

Someone wished to call attention to the word “blessing” as it was buried in a previous paragraph. If someone was not mistaken, the verb “to bless” implied the presence of some bestowing consciousness that sanctified the sanctified or else…

***

Just then the author raised his hand to his forehead and massaged the painful lump he found there. He could tell he was going off the rails again. He knew it was just this sort of aimless, self-indulgent exercise which resulted his recent collapse.

For weeks, he had digressed into scarcely imagined recesses of the Palace, crazily careering from thought to thought as his synapses fired in random sequences. When he finally returned to his preconceived obligations, shouldering all the exotic treasure his battered gray matter would bear, he was found raving in his chambers, waving the clenched thumb and forefinger of his right hand above his head, shouting: “I got you now, you motherfucker.” Although his fingers clasped only air.

****

When Wayne received the aerogram from Herr Murphy and Frau Eva Schiene informing him of Isolde’s unfortunate death, Wayne read the entire letter and set it aside with promotional mailings from Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report.

That’s the kind of guy Wayne was.

—30—

Epilog In Media Res

It occurs to me that some straggler might want to read all of Trout’s Tale in its God-given order, assuming I live long enough to publish all of it. I guess I could start another stack and publish it in order there, but where’s the fun in that?

Instead, what I’ve currently decided to do is add this epilog as an index to previous posts in the order in which they were not written, but in the most recent order they have appeared in the Hall of Records. Links will become active as new URLs are generated.

Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions.

Trout’s Tale thus far…

Frontal Matter And Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33