The Nomadic Hippos

A band of nomadic hippopotamuses lived in Phoenix, Arizona. No one knew how long they had been there; people had seen them sitting on street corners for what seemed like eternity. They would mostly mind their own business, and always moved out of the way for passersby, being generally nice. They frequented the shady side of town, where everyone was afraid to walk in fear of muggings. The hippos called themselves the Retroactive Order of Happy Orange Hippos or ROHOH for short, since they were quite orange and distinguishable. They shocked people because they spoke not English, but Hippoish, a bizarre twist of English, among themselves.

The hippos happened to have photographic memories, and in the numerous years of wandering the streets peddling merchandise, had come to greet most people by sight. However, on one dark and foggy day, a tall thin stranger came walking down the sidewalk towards the hippos' stand, located on a busy street corner. It was against a brick wall twenty or so feet from the street, and at the entrance to an alley. The stand was unique in the aspect it was built entirely of newspapers. Thousands of newspapers were tightly rolled into logs, and still other papers tied the logs together. Even when it rained, the immense quantity of newspaper in the structure prevented any significant damage. Most people were extremely impressed with it. As the stranger approached, his features came into detail for the hippos. He had a very sharp look about him, bright red hair plastered down with too much hair gel, vivid green eyes that seemed to bore into your head, and an unmistakable nose. It was the type of nose that would stick out like a drill bit, sharp and protruding. He was mildly tall at 6'2", and walked in a very queer way, the hippos noticed. He would take 3 giant strides, then raise one leg at a right angle to the knee, as if to balance on one foot. He would then proceed to jump about one foot backwards, then spin in a circle, and continue to walk as if he never stopped.

As the stranger approached, the hippos observed him with curiosity and mild pity. The man stopped at the stand, looked at the hippos, and in an unusual foreign accent that pierced the wind, asked, "For I, hippos, you do have interesting of anything?" The hippos stared at each other. The man was speaking his words out of order, and they were not quite sure if he was aware of that fact.

The eldest hippo, Tasgrio, finally answered, "Why yes we do. ROHOH sells all sorts of interesting items for gentlemen such as yourself. Might I interest you in an anachronistic calculator?"

The stranger replied, "Me you must pardon for not myself introducing. I am Exzor, Lord of the Thousand Bananas."

Tasgrio thanked Exzor for introducing himself, and said, "For yourself, I recommend this Anachronistic Calculator here. Not only does it compute in Reverse Polish Notation numbers up to 3 digits, it contains the dimension of time."

"Controls time it does, you mean?" asked Exzor.

"No," replied Tasgrio, "It is time, it has been, and shall be, for all eternity."

Exzor examined the calculator. It was marked "TI-81" at the top, and ripples seemed to flow through the blue case, as if it was shifting in and out of this dimension.

"Price what you want do?" asked Exzor.

"Three hundred dollars and forty-seven cents," replied Tasgrio.

"It I will take," said Exzor, flashing a wad of bills from a hidden compartment in his sneaker. He counted out four hundred dollars and laid it on the newspaper counter. In hippo fashion, the hippos gave Exzor his new calculator, and wrote on a 3x5 notecard, "IOU - $99.53," which they also handed to Exzor.

"You will need to learn some things about the operation of this calculator," said Tasgrio. The other hippos nodded in agreement.

"I need what to know?" asked Exzor. "Well," said Tasgrio,"even though this calculator controls time, you must learn that feature for yourself as I do not know how. What I do know, is that this calculator can interfere with people's emotions and behavior in a very powerful way. You press the '+' key, and then type a person's name in using the keypad. Do you see the faint small letters above each key?"

"Yes do I," replied Exzor, "Continue please."

"Once you have typed the person's name," continued Tasgrio, "you now press the 'on' key four times, and the display scrolls the text, 'A STITCH IN NINE SAVES TIME', from left to right. Then tap the solar cell with your index finger once. Make sure it's your index finger or bad things could happen."

"Finger of the index, understand I," said Exzor.

"Good," replied Tasgrio. "Then simply think of how you want that person to act emotionally or socially, and press 'on' once more. That person will change his or her emotional state to your wish without them realizing it. Time that contains everything, will be altered, now and in the future."

"You I thank," said Exzor happily. "Going I now must be."

"Aloha!" said Tasgrio.

Exzor walked away from the stand in his odd rhythm, and a few hundred meters away, stopped at his vehicle. It could only be described as a vehicle, because it wasn't a car or truck. The contraption was built primarily from a lawn mower and a self-igniting gas barbecue. The frame of the car was a traditional king bed frame, with four large bicycle wheels mounted in the corners. The lawnmower engine was mounted in the front center, and connected to the front wheels. The seat was an office chair, with a man's extra large belt as the seat belt. A round serving tray dish was the steering wheel. Meanwhile, parts from four barbecues were used variously here and there. The four headlights and taillights were controlled by switches mounted on the side of a toaster, which was positioned for convenient reach by the driver. Each switch allowed propane to flow from the cylinder tank in the back of the vehicle, to that headlight, where it was ignited automatically so a flame would shoot out. It was quite a clever design. The finishing touch was an old record player mounted on a five-foot high pole in the middle. On it was glued a lightbulb with aluminum backing on the inside side. This acted as a rotating light, similar to a police car, when the record player was switched on. The power for these appliances came from a battery pack in the vehicle. 128 "AA" batteries were wired together in various ways to power the vehicle's devices. This was the type of vehicle people just stared at, and thought to themselves, "What sick mind invented that piece of junk?"

Exzor climbed into his Barbower, as he called it, and gave the engine pull cord a few fast and hard yanks. The engine started smoothly, and he drove off. As he approached a stoplight ahead, Exzor remembered first that he had accidentally turned on his record player light, and secondly and more important, he had forgot to build brakes into his Barbower. He swerved violently to avoid hitting the seemingly giant blue van ahead of him, running up on the sidewalk and sending pedestrians scattering for cover. The front of the Barbower happened to be a snowplow that Exzor had, and so as he hit things such as garbage pails, they were deflected off the snowplower to the right, and slammed into storefront windows. Exzor tried taking his foot of the makeshift gas pedal, with no effect. Looking down briefly, he could see that the thin metal shaft connecting it had rusted and was disintegrating, piece by piece. He was very lucky that the Barbower couldn't go much faster than 35 mph because of its engine. He finally swerved back onto the road when it was clear. In one of those moments where you're not really thinking straight, Exzor aimed his vehicle at the local park, which was a nice sized park with a playground and a pond. He barreled past the playground, almost hitting several kids. Some of them fainted at the sight of what appeared to be junk on wheels driving towards themselves. The Barbower roared up a hill towards the pond, then at the peak of the hill, flew about one foot off the ground for an instant, and then crashed into the pond below, where it stuck.

A small crowd of curious onlookers was heading rapidly for Exzor, who was sitting in his Barbower with the pond water up to his waist. He panicked, and stood up quickly in the pond. As people ran towards him, he began to twist his body sideways in a most unusual fashion. His body shifted from three dimensions to two, and he became infinitely thin. His remaining dimensions collapsing, his head rapidly met his legs and he two-dimensionally imploded with a small cloud of mist marking his disappearance. The inquisitive onlookers jumped back immediately in fear. One senile elderly man shouted, "Aliens!" The crowd scattered, fleeing the area in all directions.

Meanwhile, the fire department had been summoned to retrieve the Barbower out of the pond. The giant red truck headed up a street toward the park, jumped the curb carefully, and drove casually across the grass to the pond. Coming to a halt, three firefighters jumped off onto the grass. Conversing briefly among themselves, the firefighters decided to raise the vehicle themselves, it appearing light because of its construction components. The most muscular firefighter waded in the pond to the front of the car, while the other two took up places on each side, towards the rear. "1...2...3...lift!" said the first firefighter, and then all three strained together to raise the Barbower. Nothing happened. Then, a moment later, the car rose in the air. But it was not caused by the firefighters, as the car kept rising until it was positioned about twenty feet high, directly over the pond.

Then following the same procedure as Exzor earlier, the car twisted its shape into two-dimensions, then zero as it imploded into mist. The firefighters were spooked badly, and in their clamber into the truck, accidentally pushed the gear shifter into reverse. As one of them slammed down the accelerator, the fire truck roared its engine and shot backwards. It whacked a bunch of trees and then crashed into a statue of Mussolini. The frightened men bolted from the truck and took off running in separate directions.

A few minutes later, a tall man slowly materialized on the roof of the Capitol Dome in Washington, D.C., clutching a pocket calculator. No one noticed him, although if someone had looked at him through binoculars, he was frantically punching keys on the calculator...

"Um..uh..this tax cut will not benefit just the wealthy," George Bush was saying.

"Of course it will lower taxes for all Americans," he continued.

"I don't think so," said Trent Lott.

Inside the Senate, the two of them were debating the proposed tax cut by President Bush. As Bush turned to reply to Lott, he froze for the briefest of moments, so that it was barely noticeable. He blinked once, and what he next did was unthinkable.

"You wanna fight, you donkey !@#?" Bush said.

Trent Lott replied, "Yeah. Let's go, you fat elephant!"

"Boys, boys!" exclaimed Don Nickles, a fellow Democrat. "Let's act like the decent and respectable adults that we are, so please take it outside."

Bush and Lott stormed out of the building together. A large crowd of senators followed them. On the steps of the building, Bush and Lott stood ready to fight, opposite each other. The senators surrounded them in a circle, and some formed betting pools on the victor. Both Bush and Lott felt anxious as they circled each other, for they knew that the winner of the fight would get their tax ideas accepted. As everyone was watching in jubilant excitement, it started! Bush threw a right punch at Lott. Lott reeled back a step and then kicked Bush where it hurts most. Bush tackled Lott and they rolled around, punching and kicking each other. Lott yanked at Bush's hair, and Bush jabbed Lott in the eye. As they struggled with each other, inadvertently they rolled down the steps. They landed with a jolt, which broke Lott's leg. Bush got up on his knees, and blasted Lott with an uppercut. Lott slumped over unconscious.

"I win!" exclaimed Bush happily. He had however, bruises all over his body, and a twisted ankle. The senator crowd started to chant "Bush! Bush! Bush! Bush!" and hoisted him up and carried him into the building. Meanwhile, to the despair of the Democrats, Lott was not killed. Instead he was tied a nearby pole and people were invited to throw eggs at him.

Inside the Senate House, Bush was declared the dictator of the United States. For his first decree, he proclaimed that sneezing was illegal and punishable by death by stoning. Meanwhile somewhere else...

"Class, we will now have a quiz," said Professor Omnibus, a Latin teacher at the Napoleon Bonaparte Memorial High School. As he rose from his desk to get the quizzes to distribute, he froze for a microsecond. Then he continued:

"The answers to this quiz will be given in Morse Code," he said, while passing out rulers to the students. "You will slap this ruler I have provided on your desk in Morse Code to respond. This quiz will be worth 143% of your semester grade."

"How can it be 143%?" asked one student.

"Very simple," responded the Professor. "The final is now 43% of your grade. You are about to invalidate all past and future scores in this glass, for this quiz is worth your semester and final grades."

"Oh," said the student, slumping in his seat.

"Question one:" barked the Professor, "What is the third-person singular form of the Latin verb 'to walk' in the pluperfect passive tense?"

Groans erupted from the students. Without a doubt, everyone was going to fail the class.

"There is one way to receive an A+," said the Professor.

"What?" shouted the students in desperation.

"You must coat the top of your desk with cereal varnish, and then disco dance on it for three minutes, while singing a Barney song," replied the Professor. Grudgingly, because they wanted a good grade, the students obliged. The Professor walked up briskly to his desk and opened a squeaky drawer, filled with cans of liquid cereal varnish. He set the cans on the top of the desk, and in furious motions, shredded his shirt into strips. He distributed the pieces to the students and poured cereal varnish on each desk. The students then polished the varnish on. The Professor paced around the perimeter of the room nervously; when everyone had finished, he stared menacingly at the students. They all groaned and climbed onto the surface of their desks.

The Professor hopped on one foot to the television set, and finding the VCR, inserted a Barney the Purple Dinosaur Sing-Along tape into it. He pushed "Play." The students began to dance wildly on their desks, and several slid off the slippery surface, crashing onto the floor. These clumsy students immediately vanished in a flash of silver light. When the three minutes had elapsed, the Professor clapped his hands together. In a thunderous boom, the television set imploded, forming a very dense 3-inch cube.

The remaining students rushed over to see this amazing feat. Several boys tried to pick up the cube, but it was too heavy for them. At this moment, the Professor's eyes began to glow. They were bright orange, and the students felt as though the orange was burning into their mind. They covered their eyes in fear, but the two orange spots would not disappear. As the class cowered in fear, the Professor walked over calmly to the cube, and then reached for his head. He placed one hand under his chin, the other on the back of his head, and gave a sharp jerk. His head disconnected from his body, and floated up to the ceiling. Picking up the cube, the Professor rammed it down his hollow throat.

Sparks flew everywhere. He lifted up the fingernail of his thumb, revealing circuitry. Pressing a button, the Professor exploded in a brilliant flash of light and sparks. This was followed precisely four and one-half seconds later by the implosion of the classroom, which to outsiders appeared to disappear into nothingness. A eerie silence filled the air.

Meanwhile, Exzor was floating on a cloud in black space. He was having the best time of his life, smashing his hands over the calculator's buttons, disrupting one event after the other. The calculator was pulsating rapidly in space-time, and Exzor did not even know where he was. This mattered none to him however. Through his hands, the Earth was falling into chaos. One minor disruption affected an event, and that event affected another, and as this continued, the disruptions grew to severe magnitude as the space-time continuum was now breaking apart.