What It Tastes Like To Be Sane

  Chapter X

  And this is what befell the Four Sided Triangles:

  As they gathered in camps upon the moon in the manner of refugees, for refugees they were from their ancient home in the Grilled Cheese Nebula, with our protagonist, Baritone Juicebox, among them, a letter descended from the sky, and fell lightly at the center of one group of triangles. Immediately they began to trace their eyes over this communication, which was from me. It was exceedingly verbose, so I’ll paraphrase.

  I mentioned the copyright infringement that I was in danger of, if I did not change my ignorant ways. I told them that though I had a great respect for their proud breech of geometrical rules, they had only existed truly for a couple months, though within the context of this story they had indeed existed since the days before the adolescence of the universe. I let them know that my claims that they had always existed might hold up in court, but that it was rather unlikely, mostly because I couldn’t afford as good a lawyer as anyone who might sue me. On the positive side, nobody, or likely, not enough people will read this tale, and even more likely nobody of enough importance to persecute me. Also, the chance was alive that the term four sided triangle was not actually copyrighted, since I had seen it as both the title of a movie and as an episode of a television show. It also might be a subject that mathematicians debate, maybe even on a moderately frequent basis. So, being that it was their fate, I left the decision up to them, as over the course of the last week I realized that this predicament was actually most likely nothing to worry about. The truth was that I had just come to be unsure as to where I was going to take their story, and needed some time to bide that over. And with that, I invited them to meet me up for pizza sometime and discuss what was to be done. In the meantime, it’s shortly after four in the morning, and I’ve been writing for a bit over an hour after my release from work, and I’d like to take a shower. Hopefully this break in writing isn’t as long as the last one, which took a week because I was trying to decide what to do with the triangles and then came back and told a completely different story. I can’t stand creative droughts. They’re just as unhealthy as long periods of time without rain.

  I was right! Twenty minutes in the shower and I’m back from the repose that was my hygienic ritual. Now this is what happened when I met with the triangles to discuss our options:

  I met them on the planet, Nevo Dum, from which pizza had originated right after the first intelligent beings in the universe became conscious that they were intelligent, and thus hungry. It was here that the greatest pizza in the universe could be found, for all pizza descended from it, and was, at least in a minor way, a diluted form of the ancient glory which gave the original recipe its majesty. There, within a pizzeria within the bowels of an active volcano, which was itself an oven, we held our conference.

  Our discourse included all the concerns I had thought of and voiced previously, and the take that many of the triangles had on those issues. Most of them were not worried about copyright infringement, for they did not believe that the phrase which constituted their name belonged to any one being, and in addition I might claim that I was being original because I added “from the Grilled Cheese Nebula” to the title of Four Sided Triangle. Such silly things often held up quite well before the scrutiny of the courtroom, I was told. However, they did express concern for my creative integrity, and my desire to hopefully create original things. They did mention though that I could still just claim ignorance and get away without having to pay any sort of fine. The problem there would be if the prosecutors were of the arrogant sort and claimed that everyone must have known about their creations. Beyond all this, beyond the judicial system and whatever “integrity” we might discuss, they had a greater concern. They were aware that their species was fading away from the memory of the universe, and even from their own memory. They had become vast stores of knowledge, but without purpose, for they never put it to practical use or helped to spread it, even within their race. Having the knowledge was nice, but why was it they had never used it? Was it because they just never learned to communicate well, and preferred to be by themselves? But lately they had come to realize that this was a crime. And perhaps it was worse of a crime to have knowledge and make it useless than to go through life ignorant, never desiring that knowledge in the first place. And while they had knowledge, they were certainly lacking in wisdom, for wisdom would have encouraged the practical use and spread of the aforementioned knowledge. Also lacking was common sense. They had the rarest of knowledges but not even the most common of senses. What fools they had been! And now they rued the course that the history of their species had taken. Once where they had been venerated teachers, and had brought peace and all of the pieces which constituted it, with them wherever they went across the universe, now their names were not even known. And while this was a better course, in their eyes, than having their names known and feared, if they had just stuck with their nature, nothing but good would have been seen of them in the eyes of others. But for some reason they had just fallen into the habit of indifference, and now sought to change that. Now it so happened that the momentary fear of copyright issues and lacks of originality coincided with their desire for a fresh start. Yes, the course they had taken had run too far. To turn back and try to rectify that could be done, but why not start again and do what they could to prevent that folly from ever happening again. I offered them, initially for different reasons, just what they had desired, and this opportunity was too good to not go for. Fools they would not be this time. Where before they might not have jumped at the opportunity, for fear of taking a real risk, this time they grabbed life by the proverbial horns, but very carefully, so they did not harm life, and said:

  “Life, we see your opportunity and raise you a new history!”

  And so a new history was begun.

  And in the end, when the last pizza we had ordered was reduced to a pile of crumbs upon its pedestal of a tray, we signed a contract that stated that the triangles were to take up any semblance that they desired, and that they could maintain their history, but instead of wallowing in it and pining for past glories, they would be required to use that history to enlighten themselves, and to prevent the follies of their previous existence from ever happening again. While we discussed what was to become of the triangles, I’ll relate to you another part of this tale, and come back in just a little while with our decision.

  No land was yet to be seen, and had they swam on for a thousand more miles there still would be none. Hopeless this cause seemed, but at the very least, Bari noticed that, even as a basketball, he was picking up the whole swimming thing pretty well. This was now two Bari’s that had learned. Good job Baritone! But by now they were so exhausted, and couldn’t even find in themselves the strength to swim even half the length of a kiddie pool. They needed to sleep, but lacked, being a human and a basketball, respectively, the ability to rest in the manner that a shark would.

  Now, tell me how unlucky this part is: a couple hundred miles back, they had floated by the island which another Bari had been god of in another existence. Too bad they were too focused on going forward (or in this case, eastward, that they forgot how important it was to take in their surroundings). Respite could have been found there, so long as they weren’t found and subsequently deified, or demonized, or turned into some form of holy or unholy being which they indeed were not. Who knows how they would have treated an anthropomorphic basketball. Most likely not with reverence, I’d imagine. Arthur would have stood a decent shot though, especially since it seemed like they had a funny habit of deifying goofy looking young men. Certainly this mattered not a single bit though, as anything that could have happened there disappeared from that cavern where all that had happened and all that might have happened coexisted. Don’t worry, they say that matter cannot be destroyed, but it merely changes forms, and so even more possibilities came out of their continued swimming, which turned out to be one of the greatest oceanic adventures undertaken by huma
n, basketball, or any combination of the aforementioned.

  Remember a certain undersea volcano inhabited by a grumpy hermit crab? Bari’s friend, who was a most gregarious sea turtle, had once inhabited it, but had been evicted on false pretenses because the landlord was a friend of that hermit crab, who had just been evicted from his place on grounds that were very much grounds for divorce. Well, over the years this volcano had been pushed up by Plate Tectonics, the friendly godfather of that peninsula which once attached itself to the island where Bari had been god. Quite rapidly this volcano had been pushed upwards, and it was still somewhat shocked from the quickness of the motion, but had mostly gotten over it. So, by this point, the tip of the volcano was merely twenty feet below the surface of the ocean, and better yet, they saw it was sealed. This meant several things:

  1: There was probably no water in the volcano

  2: Whoever lived inside could possibly be a surface dweller who was currently residing underwater

  3: If number two is correct, there is breathable air and respite available within that volcano.

  “Well, why don’t we dive down and knock”, suggested Bari.

  “At this point, that’s definitely worth a shot. Anything is, really. I can’t swim another micrometer.”

  And so Bari and Arthur each conjured their inner anvil, and down they sank, until they sat upon the summit of the volcano and knocked on the door. It was answered by an elderly woman who looked very much like the stereotypical sage, who saw their condition and promptly let them in. Her apartment was in the upper level of the volcano, which was now dormant. Immediately, she put some tea on the kettle and began inquiring of them as to what exactly they were up to in these parts of the sea, which weren’t exactly known for their hospitability to humans. Personally, she had just gotten lucky and seen the ad for the apartment. She had wanted to move away and work on her novel for a long time, and this was the perfect opportunity. The previous tenant had been evicted for running an illegal pinochle game, and the place was now hers. She was even working on one of those rent to own deals. And so our protagonists related to her their tale, and how they had come to be in this part of the ocean, and where it was that they intended to go. She listened, in a very understanding manner, and even formulated all sorts of important advice that they could take with them on their trip. Most importantly, though, she called a whale-taxi, which would arrive in thirty to forty-five minutes, and give them a ride to the western shore of the Eurasian landmass. She even offered to pay for it, so kind was she. In the meantime, whilst they waited, she conferred upon them several gifts that they would know how to use “when the time came” and also gave them advice regarding their quest, for she had indeed heard of the mystical basketball hoop which they sought.

  And so, when the cetacean taxicab arrived, it was with high hopes that they departed the volcano. Indeed, this was a much more positive experience than Bari’s last experience in that volcano. Almost on par, nay, at least on par, and coming very close to exceeding his first experience there, when he was a younger boy.

  Not much, snot much was to be said about the trip on the whale-taxi, though it became somewhat excitable whenever they got close to other whales, and somewhat less excited when they finally approached and finally passed the coast of Wales. Finally they were dropped off on a beach, with little hoopla. And what would you know, but the beach was covered in salad bushes. And again they struggled through those with unconquerable wills, and they kept walking, not heeding, or heeding as little as possible, the struggles they were enduring. For salad is one of the most difficult materials to walk through, almost rivaling quicksand. The way the lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, and other fruits and vegetables clung together on one bush made it extremely difficult to traverse. On top of this, the dressing which topped each plant and dripped down its side only made the passing more difficult. But finally things cleared up, and ever onward they walked, for they say that where there’s a will there’s a way, and at this point, Arthur weighed about one hundred and thirty pounds, which was quite light for his height. This was of course all due to his current plight. But they sallied ever onward, Arthur not noticing the rapid loss of weight, which many people would be envious of, which he was undergoing. Bari’s weight, of course, did not fluctuate, because all he needed was air to inflate. Even still, this was a tough experience for him as well. And as they walked they always hoped that Mount Hockey would come into view, hoping to catch at least the briefest glimpse, and to know that their objective was indeed real, and to at least vaguely gauge the challenge which was in store for them. But the mountain was ever elusive. Had they been given bad directions? How did the cowz! know about it anyway? And the antlers as well? They probably hadn’t left their homes in that forest in decades, if not centuries, if not ever, particularly the antlers, who were stationary, or seemed so at least. Could it be that they were a menagerie of lying rapscallions, a pack of untruthful rakes? It was entirely possible that the cowz! and antlers were just now having a laugh at having given Bari and Arthur incorrect directions, perhaps to a mountain and a basketball court that did not exist at all. Oh, what a hoot that would be!!!!!!!! At this point, tallying up all their weariness, their exhaustion, their fatigue, and other synonyms for being tired, it was extremely easy to place the blame elsewhere. But in truth the blame lay nowhere, it was merely just an extremely long journey they had undertaken. In fact, blame could not physically lay anywhere. In the most ancient days she had been enchanted in such a manner that made it so that she could not lay down. Unfortunate, isn’t it?

  So was the situation Bari and Arthur found themselves in, for the ground upon which they had tread had given way to a massive labyrinth. At its entrance stood a ghastly spectre that had once been a Taco, that proud, ancient, noble race who nowadays was only to be found in the Kogajuntoo Mountains.

  Long ago, this land, which had once been a field, had been raised up into a maze, three thousand leaugues across, though only three miles long. And so our protagonists, keen-eyed as they might be, could not see its end in either direction, and thusly found no course to attempt passage and hope that they might walk enough to reach that end. All of this had been foreseen ages ago when a prophet and enchanter saw in the distant future the adventure upon which our heroes would embark, and desired to add his own twist to it, and thusly gain some of the royalties garnered by the tale. Don’t worry, I’ve blocked his recent attempts to empty my bank account. His solution to his desire for fame and fortune by capitalizing on the ideas of others was this: he created a maze filled with what was, in his opinion, a myriad of comic adventures and goofy characters that could enhance the plot (I’m grateful for all this, don’t get me wrong, but I have to question his motives in doing all this).

  To our heroes, this was a welcome change of pace from the endless salad fields they had been forced to trudge through since they left the enchanted forest. They even ceased to trudge, skipped right up through perambulating, and began to saunter up to the entrance, upon which the Taco’s spectre greeted them most half-heartedly. Bari was the first to address him.

  “Oh noble spectre, might we pass your gates, so that we might solve this labyrinth and gain passage to Mount Hockey, wherein we might find the first basketball hoop, that primus of sports, and so that I might once more become human, and my comrade may find a new future for himself?”

  “I suppose”

  “Why, shouldn’t you issue forth some manner of challenge? You know, ensure that we are worthy to pass through your maze?”

  I don’t particularly care. Just go through already and leave me alone.”

  Arthur could completely understand the sentiment of the Taco’s spectre, and thus perceived that the time had drawn night wherein he should add his own opinions to this discourse.

  “Oh Taco. Why is it that you are so callous? You give us permission to pass, which is all we need, yet it pains me to see you reduced to such a state, for I have suffered as you have. I have
known the cruelties of indifference. Tell us your tale, oh Taco, so that perhaps my advice might be of some avail to lift your spirits, and perhaps you might guide us through the labyrinth of which you are the sentinel”

  That had been all the Taco’s spectre had been waiting for: an opportunity to disclose his self-pity, to speak of his misfortunes in an arrogant, yet self-deprecating tone, and ultimately waste the time of our heroes, so that they might not reach the summit of Mount Hockey.

  Now, let me give you some insight that not many of my characters know, and let’s hope they don’t overhear me, for it could foil the while plot of this tale. The enchanter who had created the labyrinth was the first being in the universe to acquire sentience, and he had had enough time to concoct a story which he would relate to the beings that would come after him about how, through his generosity and mercy, he had created them all, had given life to them, and above all, bestowed the gift of pizza. In his old age, he had passed into obscurity, faded from the memory of those he had first enchanted, and while he had not ceased to exist, he had pretty much faded from the memory of the universe, and existed in their minds not as a being, but as a tradition. This paved the way for many false gods to lay the claim to the title of creator, though in fact there was no true deity, no single being to whom the universe could give credit for its existence. What a poor lonely thing that universe is, don’t you think. It just came into existence, no parents to support and raise it, to encourage it to make the croquet team or to learn cello. Nobody there to help it get through those tough times when it doesn’t make the croquet team or its girlfriend breaks up with it. And we all think we have it tough?

  However, the ghost of this Taco had remained bewitched all these years, unable to leave the gates of the labyrinth, and not quite remembering why he was there. Oh, how he felt so sorry for himself! And so he did not hesitate to disclose his misfortunes to our protagonists, the first living beings he had seen in ages.

  This is how he came to be in the position he found himself in, as he told Bari and Arthur:

  “I was born into the race of Tacos in a noble age, during the springtime of our species. And while by no means the most noble of families, it mattered not, for even the poorest Tacos found themselves in league with the wealthiest humans, and far above their pariahs. At the time our race prospered, and we were plentiful, for humankind had not yet discovered that we were edible, a discovery which would almost lead to our extinction. In fact, the only reason my race is still alive at all is that humans discovered how to synthesize and mass-produce food products that tasted like us, and ceased in their desire to consume us. It was too late for us to regain glory though. But let us forget that digression, as I’d much rather speak of myself.

  Like I had mentioned, I was poor amongst Tacos, but through my valor and wisdom I soon rose to become a great captain and eventually a general in the army of the Tacos. But, one day we found ourselves entangled in civil war with our neighbours, the Burritos, and I found myself mortally wounded in battle. Lettuce and cheese was bleeding profusely, and I wasn’t producing enough chicken to seal the wounds, and death became ever closer. In my last delirious moments, my god appeared to me and indicated that though I had not led the most wholesome life, I could gain a second chance if I would serve him in death. I was promised a nice retirement package and a dental plan, none of which I’ve seen any hint of. In fact, I haven’t even seen God since that day, but I assume he has died or else forgotten about my existence and indentured servitude (and I cannot blame him for either one of those), and thus I remain unable to leave the gates of this maze. Though I do yearn for the flowers of the macaroni and cheese plants over there so that I might satiate my appetite, I am unable to leave this post, for fear keeps me here. Even though he probably no longer remembers me, it’s not a risk I want to run. I’ve heard that if I disobey him he’ll send me to a bad place, though I’m not quite sure what he means by that.

  Bari and Arthur mulled this story over. Surely, it was at the least heart-wrenching, even if it was a little too self-indulgent. Being the kindhearted fellows they were, and also realizing that they might have something to gain, they decided that they would attempt to liberate this Taco.

  The problem they encountered was that this Taco, being enchanted as he was, was physically unable to move from a certain area at the entrance to the labyrinth, and moreover, he did not wish to budge, but merely to continue speaking of his misfortunes. Maybe it was his own self-pity that enchanted him, and the magic of the enchanter had long ceased to exist. Certainly, if free will was extant in the universe, some guy telling him that he was physically unable to move didn’t necessarily mean that was true. As you and I know, this god was a fraud anyway. The Taco probably didn’t want to improve his situation at all, for then he’d have nothing to complain about. Despite Bari and Arthur wanting to help, and sincerely putting in an effort to listen to the Taco’s story and offering him an escape route, he didn’t want to help himself, and it wasn’t their problem. Plus, they were extremely sick of hearing his whining. So, after a spell, they sidestepped him and entered the maze.

  After taking a bit of extra precaution not to step on the neonatal salad plants waiting in the foyer, they gazed up when they saw that Arthur had trod upon concrete, and Bari floated above the very same substance, and it seemed that they had no entered a labyrinth, but a vast warehouse, bereft of anything that might take up any amount of space and thusly make it seem even a little bit smaller. But so it was that even without there being anything in the warehouse to obstruct their view, they still could not see the end. Between enchantment and technology, they really can do anything nowadays! Hell, they had made it seem like this warehouse was a maze from the outside.

  They were confounded! Astounded! Other adjectives, perhaps ones that also rhyme and also describe a state of confusion or amazement.

  And then the obligatory magical explanation came in the form of the most impressive moustache either one of them had ever laid eyes upon descending upon them. This moustache possessed the most immaculate handlebars, and would randomly change colour. Beyond that the fact that it flew and spoke, it demeanor made them assume that it was an enchanted moustache. In fact, it is unknown even to this day which aspect of the moustache gave away its magical nature before it confessed these very facts of its own volition.

  When said moustache finally reached our protagonists, they exchanged the obligatory introductions, each party gave the other some background information, and they sat down to discuss matters over some doughnuts that sat on a table that had just appeared. The moustache, in a roundabout fashion that I will make an effort to make a little more succinct, as he had a habit of talking a bit too much, told them that while this looked like a labyrinth, it was actually more of an obstacle course set out by the enchanter to prevent others from reaching the other side. This enchanter didn’t really like anything being too convenient for anyone but him, plus he prided himself on designing tricks such as this. In order to reach the exit, they would need to perform a set of tasks, some menial, some that might actually seem impressive, and to do so to the satisfaction of le magical moustache. Upon completion of these tasks, not only would the champion(s) gain entrance to the exit of the maze, but they would each have the honour of donning the very moustache they were then speaking to. Even though there were two of them doing the challenges, the moustache assured them that they would both receive the promised moustache. It was, after all, magical. However, nobody to this point had yet possessed the skill set, luck, determination, and variety of other intangibles necessary to pass through.

  And so this is what the four sided triangles had decided: given their desire to start history anew, and my desire to hopefully maintain the highest degree of originality possible, they would no longer be four sided triangles, and in fact, they would abandon completely the notion of being any sort of shape with a mismatched quantity of sides and total degree of angles.

  In the country known as the United
States of America, there is a very popular sport known as football which I am quite fond of, and of which the most significant league is known as the National Football League, or NFL. In the NFL, there was a team named the Cleveland Browns, who had a long and storied history but had been largely unsuccessful in recent years and were struggling to generate revenue. Thusly, the owner moved them to Baltimore and christened them the Ravens, after the Edgar Allen Poe poem. Several years after this move, the city of Cleveland received a brand new franchise, and they dubbed the team they were given the Browns, after their predecessors. This new team was given the rights to the Browns name and history, though they were not descended directly from the Browns of old. The Ravens, however, though they were the Browns of old, began anew with their history. I mention this because a large issue with the triangles was deciding whether to keep their history or start anew like the Ravens, and let another species become the four sided triangles and also assume their history.

  After much debate, it was decided that they would maintain their history in their memories, but not refer to it as the same lineage. The new lineage began the moment they transformed. What they were to transform into was flying sharks, or flarks, a creature I’m ripping off from a play I wrote for theater class in college, which involved the consequences that occurred when a flark met my sociology teacher in a warehouse on the planet Trenton in the New Jersey Galaxy. Now, while I’m sure the concept of flying sharks has been done before, I might specify that these were Selachimorpha of the order Hexanchidae, or in the colloquial, cow sharks. So, they completed their transformation, and set out to become noble and fair administrators of justice, though never rulers, throughout the Universe, and began on the nearest planet, which happened to be our dearest mother Earth!

  Knowing that it was Bari’s home planet, they invited him to take a ride with them back to his abode. After giving it some thought, he thanked them for the offer and kindly refused. He was not quite sure if he was ready to return, and he had regretted not exploring the moon a bit more on his last trip there. Perhaps another time he would go home, hopefully this time not attempting to once more play the part of Ophelia. So it passed that the time came for the flarks to search out injustice on Earth and rectify it, and so they began preparations for the swim. Bari thanked them for their hospitality, and as they flew toward Earth, he began to explore that planet’s Satellite.

  There are many people who state that in order to live out one’s life in a complete and fulfilling manner, they must live each day as if it were their last. Until now, Arthur had tried to do just that, but found that it only multiplied, squared, and took to much higher exponents his misery and paranoia. Because of this he became morbidly afraid, and almost died of fright on several occasions, all because he was convinced he was going to die at any moment. He had essentially become paralyzed, and even trying out for the basketball team had taken copious amounts of persuasion, for in his delirious delusions, he mistook all the basketballs to be bombs, and all the other players to be grizzly bears. This madness also compelled the other kids to ostracize him, for they, like all proper teenagers, believed themselves to be immortal, and so they naturally shunned anyone who thought of themselves as being mortal and prone to such impossible things like death. Particularly they despised those of Arthur’s ilk, who were so paranoid about their mortality and obsessive with preventative measures.

  Now, Bari’s company had helped somewhat in alleviating Arthur’s anxiety problems, and through the course of their journey, he had slowly begun learning to live each day as the day that it was, and letting the day that was to be his last remain a mystery. Hey, when it came it came, he had no control over the calendar. However, bad habits are rather hard to break, and Arthur couldn’t help but fret when the moustache issued its first challenge.

  Roughly one score of phantasms were conjured, all in baseball uniforms. The moustache assumed the guise of a coach, complete with a baseball cap and whistle, and told Bari and Arthur that ten people were going to be chosen to make the team, and both of them must make the final cut should they desire to proceed to the next challenge. Bari, though a basketball, was confident, since he had played little league baseball for about eight years as a youth. But poor Arthur was a nervous wreck. The phantom figures all around him seemed to be in better shape than he was, and their gear seemed so professional, as if they had been playing baseball not only for their whole lives, but for the duration of many lifetimes, and for the lifetimes of their ancestors, dating back to ancient days, so far back as to have been playing when said ancestors were but single celled baseball playing organisms. Bari told him to calm his nerves, for as that was all somewhat likely, it was just as likely that they were spoiled rich kids whose parents had given them all they wanted, and in this case all they had wanted would have been top notch baseball equipment. The truth, as was usually the case, lay somewhere between those two extremes, as both of those cases were indeed true to some extent. Some were ancient spirits, playing baseball from the earliest days of the earth, and some were infants when compared to the former, but had wealthy parents who bestowed upon them all the quality equipment that they could hope for.

  And so they began with sprints, at which our protagonists excelled, as they’d spent a fairly hefty portion of their time since leaving the enchanted forest fleeing from creatures that would have eaten them had they not run sufficiently quickly. The rest of the tryout, which seemed to last a couple days, though only a couple of hours indeed actually expired, proceeded much like that, with our protagonists excelling in most of the tasks, and at worst, never performing in less than a mediocre fashion. In the end, when the coach moustache lined them up, Bari was the fourth of ten chosen for the team and Arthur the tenth. The relief at being chosen completely wiped out all the anxiety Arthur had felt whilst waiting, and he didn’t even care that he was the last kid chosen. Unlike the schoolyard basketball games, when he was the last kid chosen, he had been the last of all the kids. In this case at least, he was the last kid chosen to make the team. Several there were behind him who hadn’t even made that cut. He could handle being the worst of the best. It was much better than being the worst of the whole lot for sure. They were then given the option of going out and playing with the team, being guaranteed contracts for the next three seasons, or they had the option of proceeding to the next challenge, whatever it might be. Of course they chose the challenge. Even semi-professional baseball could not deter them from their will to achieve this goal. Upon their having chosen the second challenge, a kitchen appeared before them, wherein they were instructed to bake a chocolate cake. The trick was this: they were given no chocolate, but must utilize alchemy to transfigure the codfish they were given into chocolate, without leaving any hints of a fish-like taste.

  This was Arthur’s turn to shine, as he had studied alchemy in high school, and had gotten the best grade out of all the students in the class. And so he set about giving instructions to Bari, and soon enough the codfish was going through the filter that they had made and coming out the other side as chocolate. Using this chocolate, they baked a cake using the traditionally prescribed methods. Upon testing, the moustache, who had by now donned the guise of a food connoisseur, complete with his own moustache, deemed it satisfactory, and proceeded to issue the next challenge, which would be the penultimate challenge of the challenge.

  Because three is generally held to be a magical number, with many proverbs such as “third time’s the charm” and “two is company but three is a crowd” revolving around it, it so happened that this this third challenge that the moustache would issue would also be the last. The enchanter that had created the maze had decided upon three as an appropriate quantity of challenges to issue because three seemed an appropriate quantity of anything. It just had that ring to it. Now, this challenge was the only one that was consistent from competitor to competitor, as the first two components of the triumvirate had always been completely arbitrary, created by magic that the moustache guardian ha
d no control over. They were chosen as if by the machine that chooses the powerball winners in the lottery competitions. There were balls in some other dimension, one with any possible challenge written on it, and the ones that were randomly chosen were the ones the moustache conjured up. A simple process, once one has a decent grasp on these sorts of hyper-dimensional magic. However, the third challenge was always the same, and was held to be the most challenging of the three challenges, no matter what the first two happened to be. Of course, nobody had ever dared to challenge this issue regarding the difficulty of challenges, for such a challenge to the challenge seemed foolish. And nobody would dare challenge the foolishness of the aforementioned challenge.

  What made this one so difficult was that the pass/fail aspect of its nature was entirely subjective, left to the discretion of the moustache in the absence of the enchanter that had originally created it. Bari and Arthur both were required to write an essay of precisely two hundred words that explained why they thought they deserved to be allowed to pass through to the exit of this labyrinth.

  Being a writer, I probably try to make things seem a bit more daunting and dramatic than they really are. The truth is that in all the time this labyrinth had existed, our protagonists were only the fourth and fifth beings to ever pass through, due to how remote the location was, and that nobody ever really wanted to tread the path to Mount Hockey, let alone climb it. The basketball court at the top had faded into obscurity in the minds of humans, and besides, it was well known that many dangerous creatures made their homes upon the path to its summit. So, the first three people that had come through had also been on their own lil’ quests for Mount Hockey’s basketball court. Oddly enough, the first had failed in the first task, the second in the second, and the third in the third. History did indeed bode well for our peerless protagonists, whom providence proposed might pass, provided perhaps that they propelled pens across paper and provided the prescribed essay. Alliteration is fun. I’m going to do it more later. But for now, we’re going to leave this incarnation of Bari and focus on another. Chapter twelve will furnish their essays, fear not.