Complete the Sentence II: Wal-Mart's Revenge of the Bacon!

[Alice Macher]

...a woman in her mid-fifties, fully clothed, with dishevelled salt-and-pepper hair. She wore an orange cardigan and purple sweatpants, with rainbow toe socks and no shoes. "Hello, dearie," she said with a lopsided grin.

"H--hi," said Sara, relieved at least that the interloper was ( a ) female, ( b ) clothed, ( c ) apparently unarmed, and ( d ) too out of it to likely pose a threat. And, aware as she was of the anti-magic barriers and wards around the campus, Sara felt confident this woman wasn't a malevolent sorceress.

"Is my daughter here, my plum pudding?"

"That, uh, depends," said Sara, turning off the water. "Who would your daughter be?"

"Ooh, a lovely young thing, with crow-black hair and gawky eyeglasses, she is."

"And her name is?" said Sara.

"Jaaaaaaade! She's bifurcated and she likes the rabiiiiiiies!"

"Okay, well, um, the first part of what you said rings a bell, so I'ma go get her, okay?" Sara tiptoed out of the bathroom and told her roommate a woman claiming to be her mother was in their shower.

"What the--?" said Jade. She pulled on track pants and ran on her toes into the bathroom. "Oh, mom. Did you go off the anti-Shoggoth regimen again? You know Father Sonne told you that you had to stick to it religiously."

Her mother shrugged. "I wouldn't expect him to say I had to stick to it irreligiously."

Jade resisted the urge to facepalm. "True enough, but...ah, mom, you were doing so well, even got a position that wasn't at Miskatonic for once." She helped her to her feet and out of the shower. "Why couldn't you just stick to the regimen?"

Jademom looked almost halfway lucid for a moment. "I'm sorry, Jade, but the things Father Sonne told me I had to do every day, to ward off the shoggothosis, were so...windowpaneful."

"Painful? Like, what part of it was painful?"

"Like where I had to breathe...

[Kamino Neko]

...'

Jade waited for her mother to finish. Nothing. 'Uh, Mom? What did you have to breathe?'

'Nothing in particular. I just had to breathe.'

Jade blinked. 'Mom...'

'Yes?'

Jade sighed. 'You always have to breathe. You're breathing now.'

Jade's mother looked at her, her eyes widening. 'My goth...you're right!'

Jade rolled her eyes. 'I'm not sure whether you were going for God or gosh, there m--' She stopped when she noticed her mother turning blue in the face as she stopped breathing. 'Mom...MOM! For Pete's sake, Mom, breathe!' She then let out a yelp, as her mother suddenly...

[Tamar]

...levitated two feet off the ground, at a 45-degree angle, just as Sara popped her head in.

"Jade? Dr. Jadington? Everything all right in--wha? I thought this campus was magic-proof."

Jade shook her head sadly as she spotted for her mother just in case. "This isn't magic, Sar. This is, according to what the priest (who has an M.Sc. in oldonesology as well) told us, a metabiological process resulting from contact with Shoggoths. A process which typically causes not only, as you see, madness and levitation, but also involuntary teleportation (which would explain how she got here), and worst of all..." She bit her lip and hung her head.

"Aw, roomie." Sara put a hand on her arm. "It's ultimately fatal, huh?"

"Hm? No, no. By 'worst of all,' I didn't mean death, but something much worse. You see, unless she gets emergency help from someone qualified, my m-mom is in danger of becoming...

[Kamino Neko]

...unsane.'

'Uh, Jade? Honey? I'm afraid I have something to tell you....'

'What? Oh, no. Unsane is something different than insane.'

'Oh? How so?'

'Well, see, when one is unsane...

[Alice Macher]

...one can understand things that we, at least while living, aren't meant to understand. Shouldn't be allowed to understand." She gripped Sara by the shoulders.

Sara stepped back. "...What happened to the girl who on orientation day was all, 'I'M BISEXUAL AND I LIKE THE LADIEEEES!'"

"Huh? You scooted your chair away from me a bit when I said that."

"Yeah, well, now I'm thinking I'd rather have Genki Bisexual Girl Jade for a roommate rather than Conspiracy Theorist Jade and her psycho--oh, excuse me, unsane--mother!"

No sooner had Sara said those words than she clasped both hands over her mouth. Jade just stared at her for a moment. Her eyes began to well up.

"I...I'm so sorry, Jade," said Sara. "That was unfair and cruel of me to say. Can you forgive me?"

"H-huh?" Jade hadn't understood a word of that, because Sara still had her hands over her mouth when she said it. Realizing her mistake, and turning pink, Sara repeated her apology sans hands over mouth.

Jade sighed deeply and drew the back of her hand across her eyes. "I forgive you. This's been a stressful couple of days for all of us." She held out her hands. "Hug?"

Sara smiled and hugged her. Then, after disengaging, she said, "So what's 'unsanity,' then?"

Keeping an eye on her mom who had finally stopped levitating, sunk to the floor, and fallen asleep (albeit upside down, so Jade carefully righted her), Jade went to sit on her bed and motioned for Sara to sit on hers. "Unsanity is extremely painful to the unsane," she began, "because it allows them to see all of spacetime at once, perhaps the entire multiverse at once. And yet they don't go mad from the revelation. They continue understanding it all, but never being able to communicate it to the sane or insane."

Sara grimaced. "That sounds horrible. But wait. If unsane people can't communicate what seeing all of spacetime, or all spacetimes, is like, then how do we know they really can see it?"

"That's a good question. The answer lies in communications between the few unsane people lucky enough to find others like them, so they can discuss their experiences. Some, like Dyer's graduate assistant who also encountered shoggoths just before fleeing Antarctica, left personal correspondence behind. Even though only about half of one percent of what's in such correspondence is understandable to us, enough common points seem to come up among different unsane people's writing, that they seem to be on to something."

"Unlike with, say, schizophrenia, where no two people living with it will agree with everything the other says."

Jade winked and made a "gun" gesture. "You got it."

"So, um." Sara stretched her arms behind her head. "On a practical note...do you know how to get in touch with this Father Sonne, so he can help your mom?" And let me get ready for my afternoon class, she thought.

"Oh, that's simple. We just need to...

[Tamar]

...use a cat. Beauvoir," called Jade to one of their two residence-issued tabby cats, "could you contact Father Sonne for me, sweetie?"

"Sure, Jade," said Beavoir. "Just let me get into position." She raised her left front paw and pointed it straight out away from her while mewing a series of staccato high frequencies.

"Isn't this magic?" said Sara, her brow furrowed.

Jade shook her head and spoke in an undertone. "Not magic. Old divinity school technology. Shush. She needs to concentrate."

After about twenty seconds, Beauvoir stopped mewing and put her paw down.

"Thanks, Beau," said Jade, petting her. "Now," she said to Sara, "we wait."


Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Jade looked in the peephole, squeed softly, and let the visitor in. "So glad you could make it, Father. Sara Kim, Father Manov Sonne; Father Sonne, my roommate, Sara Kim."

The priest, a brown-haired, grey-sideburned man in his forties, smiled. "Nice to meet you, Sara. Jade, good to see you again, if not under the happiest circumstances. Ah, and there's the good professor, fast asleep. This shouldn't take long." He crouched down beside Jade's mother, looked her up and down, took from his kit bag some holy water and a copy of The Top Secret Psalter: For Advanced Healers Only, No Looky-Loos, Saith the LORD, and began to read from it in an undertone while sprinkling her with the water.

Sara leaned towards Jade's ear. "Um, does Father Sonne know this is a school for--"

Jade eyerolled and whispered back. "Yes, yes, he knows. He's cool with it. Has a gay younger sister. Nice girl."

After a few minutes, the priest got to his feet, then helped Dr. Jadington to hers. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I hereby pronounce this woman officially...

[Kamino Neko]

...abnormal.'

'Abnormal?' Sara raised an eyebrow.

'That's normal for Mom. And Father Sonne, for that matter.'

'I heard that.'

'You're welcome!'

Father Sonne grinned at Jade, and led Jademum out of the shower. 'Lovely place you have here. Could probably do with some decoration that's not porcelain.'

'This is just the...ok, actually, you know what, nevermind...' Sara shook her head. 'I thought I was going to miss Lisa, but it's almost like she's still here!'

'Who's Lisa?' Jade tilted her head. 'I know she's not your girlfriend, since you didn't shut up about her for hours...'

'Hush! Anyway, Lisa's just a friend of ours from back home. She's a bit weird. Like, for example, the time she...

[Alice Macher]

...was caught smoking in the washroom in high school last year, but didn't get suspended."

Jade snorted. "A real bad girl, huh? How'd she manage not to get in trouble for puffin' on cigarettes?"

Sara smiled. "Who said anything about cigarettes?"

"...She smoked a pipe in school? Or are we not talkin' tobacco? A joint, then? A bong?"

"No, no and no."

"Well then, what was she smoking?"

Sara giggled. "Meat."

Jade removed her glasses, squinted, and put them back on. "How the hell do you smoke a meat cig--oh. You mean, like smoking meat to cook and preserve it. But why was she doing that in school?"

"That's what Principal Armillaria wanted to know, since it set off the smoke detector and sprinkler system. But it turned out she had a perfectly legitimate reason. (Even if Aggie found she couldn't use that washroom for a few days, without getting nauseous from the odour.) You see, the meat was provided to her--though not without considerable regret--by her girlfriend Luna, a witch from Hogwarts School, Scotland. It was necessary to smoke some ASAP and offer it to the Great Honeybadger Spirit so that it would help stop the apocalyptically destructive Internet meme named for its people. The meat came from a fantastical beast known as the Avalonian Three-Spleened...

[Kamino Neko]

...Reticulated Piethon.'

Jade tilted her head. 'Say that last bit again?'

'Reticulated Piethon.'

'Something about that last word isn't right. You're not saying "python", are you?'

'No. "Piethon".'

'I thought so.' Jade took off her glasses, and cleaned them, absently. 'So, what is a piethon?'

'Well, that should be obvious...'

'A snake that's good in pies?'

'... No.'

'A snake that eats pies?'

'Not that, either.'

'It is a snake, yes?'

'Yes. It's a snake that makes pies.'

'...' Jade put her glasses back on. 'Makes pies.'

'Yes.'

'How do snakes make pies without hands?'

'Easy...

[Tamar]

...with their spleens. Why do you think they have three of them?"

Jade felt her breakfast trying to come up for air. "But... spleens are... How is that..."

"Oh, right, of course." Sara lightly cuffed her own forehead. "You wouldn't know this. Only one of their spleens is an internal organ. The other two are on the outside, about where a primate's arms and hands would be, and they have opposable--"

Jade was turning green. "I... think I get the idea, thanks. Why don't we cut this convo short so you don't have to shower after I've just used the bathroom to...y'know. Urp."

Sara cringed. "Sorry. And you're right; I'd better get ready."



That afternoon, Sara had her first 3Bad class, Introduction to Eukaryotean Literature.

"From my experience," said Professor Ellen DeGenus, "there are different reasons that some of you are taking this course. For some, it may be a simple reading error, and you thought you'd enrolled in Intro to European Literature."

"...Damn it," said a handful of students, who gathered their belongings and headed out.

DeGenus smiled patiently. "Nothing to be ashamed of. Happens every time this course is offered. --For rather more of you, the reason you're here is simple curiosity. 'Aren't all humans eukaryotes?' you may ask. 'And what eukaryotes besides humans have ever written anything?' Anyone care to take a guess?"

Sara raised her hand.

"Yes? Please introduce yourself."

"I'm Sara Kim. And in fact, I know of a few eukaryotes back in my hometown who've written some noteworthy literature. (Well, noteworthy to their own species, at least.) Like Charles Levac, for instance, author of Cat's Cree-Wri Dull."

The instructor beamed. "Yes! Good! Not to be confused, of course, with Cat's Cradle by the human author Kurt Vonnegut. Where are you from, Ms. Kim?"

"Belleville, professor."

"Why am I not surprised! There are so many non-human eukaryotes of letters in Belleville, that you come to this course with a definite advantage. I'll be keeping my eye on you."

Sara grinned. I had no idea our hometown was that well-regarded, she thought.

"Now," said DeGenus, "another common question that brings people to this course is, 'Well, sure, other organisms besides humans can, and have, produced works of lasting literary quality. But why group these all together as eukaryotean literature? Of course sufficiently intelligent eukaryotes can think abstractly and creatively, and somehow get their ideas down on paper, computer, or rock slime. I mean, their cells have nuclei! Duh.'" The class laughed. "Most people wouldn't expect an infinite number of prokaryotes at a typewriter, given infinite time, to produce Hamlet. How could they, most people would ask you. They're nearly all unicellular and lack a nucleus or other membrane-bound organelles. The most they're good for is living inside our intestines and helping with digestion, right?" More laughter.

"Well, folks, most people are wrong. The fact is that more than a few particularly gifted bacteria and archaea have produced notable works of Earth literature. In fact, some were doing so over a billion years before the Epic of Gilgamesh. Although we won't be covering it in this class, to be sure, one such belatedly-recognized classic is the epic bacterial love story known as...

[Alice Macher]

...Cyano de Synergerac. But back to literary works by organisms with nuclei..."

The lecture continued in this vein. At the end, Prof. DeGenus said, "For next time, read Books I to III of Homering Pigeon's Audbonyssey, and come prepared to discuss the use of chiastic structure in the Bread Crumb Eaters episode."



Meanwhile, back in Belleville, Lisa was teaching her first class at WUSSUP: Magical Safety for N00bs.

"The most important thing to remember before casting a spell," she told her twelve-year-old students, "is to always make sure you've fastened your...

[Kamino Neko]

...seat.'

'Our seatbelts?' One of the students raised a hand.

'No, your seat.'

'Ah, so out chair doesn't get blown away by the spell?'

'No, not your chair. You seat. Your bum, your butt, your tuchus.'

'... Fasten your ass?'

'Language, kid. But, yes.'

'... How? And why?'

'I'll get to how in a minute. And to keep it from flying off.'

'... HOW?'

'Easy, by...

[Tamar]

...taking your wand or staff, if you use one, or just the index finger of your good hand, and drawing a circle around your bum three times counterclockwise, like this, while saying Aekrona feghistol, which is Lower Middle Fairy for 'get your rear in gear.' Everyone stand up, and let's try it."

Lisa walked up and down the rows, observing the students' efforts. "Good... good... Tabitha, don't swivel your hips; you're not playing hula hoops. Aelfric, that's clockwise. Do that before a spell and you just might have to kiss your bum goodbye. --That's better... Geoffrey, don't even think about mooning the girls behind you or I'll let Miss Hardbroom deal with you. And you don't want that... Mm-hm... mm-hm... Good... All right, you all seem to be getting it, so park your keesters, meesters. And meesses... Yes, that means sit down." Everyone followed suit. "Any questions? --Yes, Sook-Yin?"

"Principal Winklemeyer, what if you need to cast a spell and you can't stand up? Say, you're in an airplane and the 'fasten seat belt' sign is on? How do you safeguard your bum then?"

"Excellent question." Lisa smiled. Sook-Yin Tan had been one of the standout competitors at the Weirdolympics that Lisa and friends had organized to recruit students (here's why). "What you do in that case is...

[Alice Macher]

...kind of scrunch your butt around counterclockwise-ish, in your seat, while saying the same words. Like this." She sat on the edge of her desk and demonstrated. Anyone asks what you're up to, tell them your butt itches."

The class laughed.

"LOL, yes." Lisa stood up, away from the desk. "But that brings me to another very important safety point: If you have to do magic in public, among mundanes (or Muggles, as Lu--Ms. Lovegood would call them), be as discreet as you can. Not so much because of the mundies themselves, because once you gain enough experience you won't have to worry about their trying to stop you. No, it's because public places are gathering places for invisible imps and low-grade fairies, looking for mischief to play on humans, and if you make it obvious you're doing magic, they tend to feel threatened, and they may do something like taking a great big dump...

[Tamar]

...truck, filled with quick-setting gelatin, and emptying it onto you and and any unlucky bystanders."

The class just looked at her.

"What? I'm totes sr--er, completely serious. There's a magical documentary, filmed with special Invisib-o-Vision™, that shows this very type of nasty behaviour by said creatures. Imps and Fairies Gone Wild. In fact, for homework, look it up on BrewTube, watch it, and prepare a 250-word summary, double-spaced." At that moment the classroom clock went, BELLS, BELLS, BELLS, BELLS, BELLS, BELLS, BELLS. "Hm. I could see that getting pretty darn annoying. Must change that. Anyway, on to your next class."



That afternoon, just after 3:30, Lisa went back to her sleeping quarters on the campus (yes, it was a boarding school, though not a British-style one. No "houses") and found Luna already there, curled up in a levitating beanbag chair and reading Beyond the Planet of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

"Holy Merlin," said Lisa, kicking off her sensible shoes and changing (temporarily) out of her business pantsuit into a Flying Spaghetti Monster tee and yet another plaid mini. "First day of the first semester, and I'm already exhausted. Only a couple of periods to teach for me, but there was also the morning welcome assembly, orientation at lunch, a board of trustees meeting, and a shitload o' paperwork." She stood up on her bare toes to kiss Luna in the chair. Luna smiled and patted her lap, inviting her bride to join her there. Lisa did so. "How was your day, moon pie? Rub my feet, please."

Luna rubbed her feet. "It was fine. I used that glare of mine, that you've said is so effective, each time any of the students got out of line. Seems to work. The most challenging part of the day came during third period Beginning Potions, when Selene Sestina added too much treacle to her Newt-Turning Potion and...