All Hail Kah-Pey!

All Hail Kah-Pey!

 

          The ancient Tortoiselander pushed back his propeller beanie and scratched his head. “Show you Mount Kah-Pey? Well, mister, that’s rather hard to do nowadays…” He thought a moment, then came to a decision. “I’ll do what I can. Come this way, and I shall explain the difficulty.”

          So the ancient Tortoiselander ambled slowly along the dusty track, telling his story with many a pause and a digression. I had no choice but to follow and listen.

 

          *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

          It all happened a long time ago, back when I was a young sprout. I hadn’t even been initiated yet; so you know that I am telling you the straight truth.

          I remember it as clear as if it happened yesterday. It was January 20, 2376; the very first day of the sign of Aquarius, on the very first year of the Aquarian Age. Quite an omen…

          It wasn’t as if we hadn’t been warned. There had been underground rumblings for weeks. Dogs howled, goats run away, chickens laid square eggs, caapi vines pulled up their roots and ambled down the road. The Kah-pists even declared an emergency holiday. Clearly something big was going to happen.

          So who should show up at our commune’s front gate but Uncle Ted himself!

I left the video monitor and ran to tell Brother Tom. He told Sister Jenny Shark, and she told uncle-cubed Sam; so that fierce old man picked up his cane and limped to the front gate.

Once there, Sam glared at Uncle Ted awhile. Finally he snapped, “What are you doing here in stodgy old Tortoiseland? Right now a bright boy like you could be making tons of money by smiling for the camera at the tip of the Pimple! Or better yet, you could be slaving in a hot cubicle, concocting lies for crooks and preachers!”

Uncle Ted said, “I wanted to spend the holiday with you.”

“A sound rationale,” Sam conceded. “And the real reason?”

“Well… I had a bad feeling…”

My uncle’s uncle’s uncle said, “Come on in.” He stood aside. “It’s good to know that you do have a brain in your head.”

         

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted, “I don’t dig this ‘in medias res’ jazz. Why don’t you fill me in on some background?”

“In good time, sonny, in good time,” said the ancient Tortoiselander. “It’s a long way to Kah-Pey.”

“Where is it, by the way?” I looked around. “They called Kah-Pey the biggest crag on the continent, but I don’t even see a tall hill!”

“Well, Kah-Pey isn’t very tall anymore.”

“What, it’s grown shorter?”

“You might say that.”

A detumescent mountain? I wondered, but all I said was, “How disappointing. And I don’t get it. Please explain.”

“In good time, sonny, in good time.”

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

          We called our commune “Terrapin Station”. After all, we were Tortoiselanders; and what’s more, most of our founding members were Dead Heads. That’s a music cult, sonny. Every year Brother Tom attended the local festival to record new files. I rarely listened to them; I wasn’t much into religion.

          There had also been a few Wobblies amongst our founders; so naturally Terrapin Station was an anarcho-syndicalist collective. It was registered as a patriarchy; which meant, said Sam, that Sister Jenny was the one who made all the real decisions.

          By the way, the name “Kah-Pey” has nothing to do with the caapi vine, which grew all over the commune grounds. I found out why many years later, when they initiated me.

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

         

          “Aha!” I interrupted. “So you were all into drugs!”

          The ancient Tortoiselander snapped, “Nonsense, mister! We never used drugs!”

          “Never, ever?”

          “No dangerous psychoactive substances, ever,” he insisted. “Alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and aspirin strictly forbidden!”

          “You call those dangerous psychoactive substances?”

          “Well, they are! And we didn’t allow them! We only liked safe psychoactive substances! It was one of the few rules that we at Terrapin Station ever nearly agreed to!”

          “ ‘Nearly’?”

          The ancient Tortoiselander sighed. “Well,” he admitted, “there was Sister Jenny Shark, of course. Truth to tell, she drank like a fish. But she was the only exception, which is pretty good, don’t you think?”

          “What other rules did you have?”

          “Right Livelihood. No exploitation, even of outsiders!”

          “Oh. And how did Jenny Shark interpret this rule?”

          “She took a night job as a professional dominatrix. Yes, she spanked rich old fools for a living! That’s how she paid for our new sound system.”

          I commented, “I sense a pattern emerging here.”

          “And most important of all,” the ancient Tortoiselander intoned, “we at Terrapin Station strictly adhered to the Absolute Pacifist Passive Non-Violence Creed; and so, no guns, no weapons, no implements of dee-struction. Ever.”

          “And was Jenny Shark an exception there too?”

          The ancient Tortoiselander sighed. “Well,” he admitted, “it was mostly thanks to her shotgun that we were never bothered by crooks or taxmen. So we figure that it was worth it.”

          “It sounds like all your rules were made to be broken.”

          “That’s how we did things at Terrapin Station!”

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

          Little things like that set Tortoiseland apart from crazy Hareland. We certainly wouldn’t have built Mount Kah-Pey!

          But then, what else would you expect from a bunch of Neo-Conservatives? We Tortoiselanders were much more sensible; we were Paleo-Radicals. It made for a quieter life; that’s what my uncle-cubed always said.

          Well, actually, Sam wasn’t really my uncle’s uncle’s uncle. He was really my adoptive uncle, cubed. Sam was adoptive uncle to Joe, who was adoptive uncle to Ted, who as adoptive uncle to me, you see? Our commune was an old Tortoiseland family.

          Which makes you wonder just why Ted ran away from home! And went to Mount Kah-Pey! And worked there as a video computer tech! And joined the Reactionary Party!

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

I asked, “A rebellious youth joins the Reactionary party?”

“What else? Those guys wanted to change things! They wanted class struggle! New technologies! And a sexual revolution!”

“Troublemakers,” I grumbled.

“Well, they were more honest than the Neo-Conservatives, but only because they were more desperate. Ted eventually dropped out, much to uncle-cubed’s relief,” said the ancient Tortoiselander. “Now, Sam was a staunch Paleo-Radical; as had been his uncle, and his uncle’s uncle before him.”

“A family tradition,” I noted.

The ancient Tortoiselander nodded. “And you know what? Even Sam had a brief fling with the Reactionaries when he was young and foolish!”

Exasperated, I said, “I think that what you call ‘Radical’ is, in fact, conservative; and what you call ‘Conservative’ is, in fact, radical.”

The ancient Tortoiselander stopped dead in his tracks. He reached up and tapped his beanie propeller into a blur. He stared at me, and he said, “How strange! That’s exactly what I told Sam!”

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

“Kids these days!” Sam was complaining. “They’re so damn meek and obedient! Now, when I was a youngster, we knew how to rebel! We really gave our elders a hard time!”

          “But Sam,” I chimed in, “now you’re our elder! How do you want me to rebel?”

          But I said that just to bug him.

          He was about to start spinning his beanie propeller – just like you just saw me – when he caught my eye and smiled.

          I asked, “Why do you always spin that thing when I zing you?”

          “This propeller beanie hat has been in our family for generation,” my uncle-cubed intoned. “It symbolizes Wisdom.” Then he gave it a spin.

          That was just when I made the exact same clever remark to him that you just made to me. But Sam just laughed. “Politics,” he explained.

          He leaned back in his bean-bag chair and picked up his copy of the National Liar. I forgot to tell you what he was wearing, didn’t I? Not surprising, my adoptive-uncle-cubed was a very traditional man. He always wore the tribal outfit; star-spangled headband, beads, tie-dyed T-shirt, rainbow suspenders, blue jeans and cork sandals; and he smoke a big meerschaum pipe full of seedless hemp. Just your typical Tortoiseland anarcho-eco-communal techno-peasant.

          So he leaned back in his generations-old beanbag chair (its stuffing replaced ten times, its cover patched, repatched, and piecemeal-replaced twelve times over; was it the same beanbag?) and he picked up the National Liar (“Every Rumor Unfit To Print”; shamelessly dedicated to the cause of subjectivity in the news media; “All Reports Guaranteed False”; if you read it in the Liar, then it isn’t true) and he turned up the fireplace (not a real fire – we hadn’t fixed the scrubbers yet – just a solar-battery-powered heat lamp, but we called it a fireplace just the same) and he scanned the National Liar’s headlines (“JFK assassinates Reagan; Millions Rejoice!” “Stork Robs Sperm Bank” “ELVIS RISES FROM THE DEAD!!! – Thousands Witness Saucer Miracle!” “Photographic Proof  That Pigs Have Wings!” “GOVERNMENT ILLEGAL – Mobs Rule World” “Gay Whale Weds Godzilla – Judge Crater Presides” “HONEST POLITICIAN FOUND!!!” “Solar Nova – World Destroyed”) and he said,

          “Did you know that Elvis was last seen playing cards with Bigfoot and the Tooth Fairy aboard a flying saucer?”

          “No, I didn’t know that!”

          “Well, it isn’t so,” said Sam. “Which goes to show you that you shouldn’t believe everything you read!”

          And he placidly continued to read the National Liar.

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

“I vowed to never become like him,” said the ancient Tortoiselander, “but as you can see, I did anyhow.”

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

So I wandered off, and straightaway ran into Uncle Ted.

He said, “Do you want to see the mountain? I’ve set up a telescope.”

“Through which monitor?”

“I mean a real telescope, one with lenses, on tripod stilts, that you have to look through! Come on!”

A real telescope on tripods to look through! Naturally I followed him. We went outside in the chill evening air, and my uncle Ted showed me Mount Kah-Pey through an genuine antique brass refraction telescope. It sure was pretty.

I mean Mount Kah-Pey was pretty, though the telescope was pretty pretty too. I didn’t notice; it was getting dark, and Mount Kah-Pey was starting to light up.

Uncle Ted whispered, “Lovely!”

“I’ve never seen it so brightly lit before!” I said. “Everybody has everything on!”

“All the lights… all the machines… on at full power,” Uncle Ted said quietly. Something was on his mind.

“Oh, I get it! They’re holding an Energy Potlatch!”

“That’s right,” said Uncle Ted. “They have so much energy right now that they don’t know what to do with it all. So they deliberately waste some.”

I complained, “We never get to waste energy here!”

Uncle Ted explained, “We don’t have to, here.”

We took turns looking through the telescope at the spectacle of people deliberately wasting lots of energy. “Fireworks!” I cried. “Oh wow!”

“Almost as if Kah-pey were still a volcano,” Uncle Ted said quietly.

I sneaked a quick worried look at my uncle. He never liked to use the V-word. But he didn’t look upset, just thoughtful, so I turned back to look at the pretty fireworks.

Eventually Uncle Ted said, “We’d better go. And fold up the ‘scope, will you? No point in leaving it out here.” I carefully folded up the brass telescope so that we could bring it back safe with us.

Sam caught us sneaking in. He groused, “And it’s all the fault of that damn-fool preacher and his rich-bitch doxie, the prude.”

It wasn’t a terribly reverent way to describe the founders of the Neo-Conservative Party; but Uncle Ted didn’t object. He just left, carrying the ‘scope back to the storeroom.

My uncle-cubed asked me, “You know who I mean?”

“I know who you mean,” I retorted. “You mean Reverend Wryzill and Miz Constance!”

“The Reverend Doctor Wryzill, you mean,” he mock-scolded me.

“The Reverend Doctor Jackson Wryzill, you mean,” I retorted. It was a fun game.

“The Reverend Doctor “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” Jackson Wryzill, DD, MD, LLD, DDS, you mean,” my uncle-cubed told me. “And the renowned purity crusader Ms. Prudence Constance.”

I asked, “What’s purity?”

“ ‘Purity’?! Who taught you such a naughty word?”

I said, “You did!”

“Not me; you must mean Miz Prudence Constance. Why, she was chairperson of the Chastity Crusade, recording secretary of the Women’s Decency League, treasurer of the Anti-Sex Harassment Force, and president of the Guardians of, ahem, Purity.”

“What’s chastity?” I asked. “What’s decency?”

Sam sighed hugely. “More naughty words.”

“What’s Anti-Sex?”

“It’s what they were harassing people for.”

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

“Now remember to spell it right, sonny! That’s W-R-Y as in wry bread! Z-I-L-L as in Godzilla!” the ancient Tortoiselander insisted. “And pronounce it right, too! That’s ‘rise-ill’, not ‘rizzle’! You hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said.

“And she’s Ms. Prudence Constance! M-S! Period! P-R-U-D-E-N-C-E! Space! C-O-N-S-T-A-N-C-E! Miz PC, you hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said.

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

Sam showed me a special magazine edition that the National Liar printed for this emergency holiday season. It was an in-depth biography of those two. What tales they told!

“You see, Jack Flash and Miz PC were both as rich as Hell, but they had a little problem. It was called Kah-pey.”

“Their pet volcano!” I exclaimed.

“You mustn’t use the V-word,” my uncle-cubed mock-scolded me. “They got annoyed with its habit of regularly spewing hot ash and lava over their broad estates.” Sam squinted at the magazine, pored down its columns of print. “See – it’s right here in the Liar – one morning in bed together, those two thought up this really bright idea…”

“What were they doing in bed?”

“Thinking up bright ideas!” said Sam. “Namely; that modern technology makes it possible to put a cap on Kah-pey!”

“A cap?!” I mock-goggled.

“A cap,” he replied with mock seriousness; and he intoned (while I giggled helplessly), “With Science and Modern Technology in control, we can keep Mount Kah-Pey secure forever!”

“Forever?!” I gasped.

“Forever,” he said grimly. “It says so right here in the National Liar.”

I howled with laughter.

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

          I goggled in all sincerity. “A cap?!”

          The ancient Tortoiselander said, “Yup.”

          “On an active volcano?!”

          “Yup.”

          “What for?”

          “I told you what for; two rich fools wanted to shut the damn thing up. But in addition, mind you, there was profit to be made! Yes, you heard me, profit! A genuine killing to be made in geothermal power!”

          “Geothermal power from a capped volcano?”

          “A real hot property,” the ancient Tortoiselander declared. “Imagine all the megawatts of heat energy you can tap off tons of molten rock not far underground! No more lava-inundated generators! No, now we have safe volcano power!”

          “You mustn’t use the V-word,” I said numbly.

          “Power too cheap to meter! Megawatts! Gigawatts! Whatever you want! As much as you can take; in fact, the more heat you can steal from the Pimple, the better!”

          “I see.”

          “The Mount Kah-Pey Geothermal Industrial Project wants you to consume energy. They’re constantly expanding facilities, but don’t worry. It’s true that all those new boreholes tend to weaken the mountain, but they’re constantly weaving steel cables all over the V-word, in order to even out the stress, and leave no single weak point.”

          “But what if it all goes all at once, like a bubble?” I asked.

          “Good question!”

          “And by the way, where is Kah-Pey?” I asked, looking around.

          No high ground anywhere.

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

I forgot to tell you what Those Two looked like.

Jack Flash wore a traditional Hareland business suit; mohawk haircut dyed bright green and purple, wraparound mirror shades, safety-pin earrings, studded black leather jacket, black jeans, and boots. I believe the style is called “punk”.

Don’t laugh. Hareland businessmen had to dress like punks, if they wanted to make any money. Uncle Ted, for instance. He had to wear that stuff, or they wouldn’t hire him anywhere.

Miz PC was equally traditional; she dressed like a Hareland housewife. No reason why; she was rich enough to afford better; she just like to dress ‘below her station’, if you please. The style is called ‘Morticia-clone’; black filmy dress, high heels, long black straight hair, black eyeshadow, black lipstick, bone-white face, and sharp red nails. Very old-fashioned.

I also forgot to quote Ms. Prudence Constance about the miraculous vision she received, blessing this venture. For you see, young man, she told the world that she met an angel…

What, you don’t believe me? Then judge for yourself, O skeptic. She said:

“In his hands I saw a long golden spear and at the end of the iron tip I seemed to see a point of light. With this he seemed to pierce into my heart several times so that it penetrated into my entrails. When he drew it out I thought he was drawing them out with it and he left me completely afire with a great love of God. The pain was so sharp that it made me utter several sharp moans; and so excessive was the sweetness caused me by this intense pain that one can never with to lose it.”

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

          “Amazing!” I cried.

          The ancient Tortoiselander said, “That’s what I said, too, when I first heard it.”

          “That was from the president of the Guardians of Purity?”

          The ancient Tortoiselander said, “The Neo-Conservative attitude towards sex was the same as their attitude towards volcanoes. Both were merely forces of nature.”

          “Merely forces of nature?”

          “Created by God for them to harness and subdue. But they themselves were above such things. They were in control. They were masters, not slaves; management, not labor.”

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

          “They’re convinced that they’re invincible,” Sam told me as soon as my giggle-fit passed. “It says right here in the Liar; ‘We’re intelligent beings, we can control a big dumb volcano’.”

“An intelligent being wouldn’t even try to control a big dumb volcano!” I jeered.

Sam said, “An intelligent being wouldn’t make a V-word into their main industrial power center. An intelligent being wouldn’t put their homes on or anywhere near such a folly! And, when the damn thing’s innards rumble a bit more than usual, an intelligent being would never throw a party for his richest friends and enemies in a big building right on top of the Pimple itself! But that’s exactly what those lunatics are doing right now!”

“Are they televising the party?” I asked eagerly.

Uncle-cubed frowned; then he eased up and said, “In an hour. You can watch with us as soon as you do the recycling.”

“Aww, Sam!”

“You can stomp the cans, O.K.?”

“O.K.,” I agreed quickly.

“So be nimble with those cans! Be quick!”

I smiled. “Jack-be-nimble?”

“You’re not Jack!” Sam objected.

I sang;        “Jack be NIMBL, Jack be quick

Jack Flash sat on a candlestick

‘Cause fire is the Devil’s only friend!”

Sam and I laughed. It was a Tortoiseland nursery song.

He said, “Do you know what that acronym means?”

“N-I-M-B-L?” I said. “No, what?”

“ ‘Not In My Bloody Lifetime’,” he intoned. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash himself said that. Get in, get out, quick as a hare!”

“The Harelandish way!” I cried.

Sam nodded. “For you see, dear nephew-cubed, they all know – anybody with any common sense knows – what’s bound to happen sooner or later…”

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

          “For that was the way of the Pimple and its pimps.”

          I scratched my head, trying to put it all together. “So let me get this straight. They built an entire industrial city on top of a geological time bomb.”

          “That’s right,” said the ancient Tortoiselander.

          “Which they all intended to abandon at the last moment.”

          “Almost right. Whenever seismic activity indicated magma flow, they’d declare and Emergency Holiday Energy Potlatch. Anything to bleed off the heat! Not only was energy-wasting permitted, it was in fact a religious duty!”

          “Well, that makes sense.”

          “And only plebes, wimps, and lowlife – that is, poor folk – only they would be gauche enough to cut and run whenever the V-word rumbled! The ambitious wanted to be the last to leave!”

          “So what did they do?”

          “To dare each other, they’d throw a big party, in a big building set right atop the Cap itself. And if you don’t attend, why then you’re not a member of their club.”

          “And people attended?”

          “Every time so far!”

          “But that’s… stupid!”

          “Yup.”

          “I mean really, truly, seriously stupid!”

          “Yup.”

          “How can anyone be that dumb?”

          “Politics,” he explained.

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

A hierarchical city grew over Mount Kah-Pey; the higher up, on the repressed volcano itself, the pricier the neighborhood, with the peak on the cap itself. The poor folk and the workers lived around the base of the mountain, right next to the racetracks, the industrial parks – and the escape highways.

The mountain was covered with lights and electric trams. There was a sub-orbital launch catapult, and lots of microwave power-beam emitters.

The mountain was covered with utility boreholes, all very well-lit. No smoky industry to offend delicate nostrils.

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

          “But plenty of heat pollution,” said Uncle Ted. “And whenever it gets too hot for the rich folk…”

          “Yeah?” I asked.

          “…they just turn up the air-conditioning!”

          “Wow!” I marveled. I stared at the screen. “And their houses are so big!”

The external telescopic  camera was pointed at Kah-Pey, and my uncle was showing me the sights.

          “Their mansions need to be covered with Faraday cages, to shield them from all the microwave energy. But it doesn’t work; they still go sterile.”

          “So how do they have kids?”

          “Mostly they just adopt them. Or steal them.”

          “Oh.” I pointed at the monitor screen and said, “Isn’t that the Army base?”

          “Right next to the weapons lab.”

          “And what are those buildings for? They’re so well lit!”

          “Those are casinos.”

          I squinted at the screen and read, “T… &… A… Nitely. What’s T&A?”

          “Well…” He seemed embarrassed somehow. “Tits and ass.”

          “I see those here all the time, in the hot tub. So what?” Then I saw something more interesting. “Ooo, ooo, look at that!”

          Uncle Ted said, “It’s the Mint!”

          “Oh wow!” I said. “And look at all those office buildings!”

          “That’s where the corporate bureaucrats work,” said Uncle Ted.” And see that building there? The one which looks like a church? Guess what it is.”

          “City Hall?”

          “No, it’s the Stock Market! City Hall is over there.”

          “You mean there?”

          “No, no, that’s the central bank headquarters! The little building’s City Hall!”

          “And what’s that building?”

          “That’s the Narcotic Control Division’s Evidence Warehouse #1, where the narcs keep their stash.”

          “It’s huge… and what’s that?”

          “The government records building. To help them remember everything, they keep a big, big superconducting supercomputer there, chilling out in a vat of liquid helium.”

          “Liquid helium?! Cool!”

          “The place is as cold as a bureaucracy’s heart,” said Uncle Ted. “I should know.”

          “Oh, you worked there? What’d you do?”

          “Well…” He seemed embarrassed somehow. “Mostly video programming.”

          “You mean, photoshopping?”

          “Sort of.”

          “You mean… lying?”

          “Sort of.”

          “Cool!” I said. “And look! There’s the TV studios! And the antennas!”

          “Sending and receiving,” said Uncle Ted. “Mount Kah-Pey is watching you!”

          “What are those funny-looking buildings?”

          “You mean the ones at the peak? Right atop the Cap itself? They’re the churches, of course. See those two domes?”

          “I know! They’re the Crystal Cathedrals!”

          “Also known as the ‘Family Jewels’. And do you see the Power Tower?”

          “Right in between? Sure! It’s so well lit!”

          “Right now all the lights are on.”

          I said, “Gee. What with those two domes and the tower right in between, you know what it looks like?”

          “Yes,” said Uncle Ted. “Everybody knows.”

          “Well, I think it looks vaguely obscene,” Sam groused. He had snuck up behind us and was peeking over our shoulders. “And if there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s vagueness!”

          I asked, “Is dinner ready yet?”

          “Hot pizza and cold root beer await you in the TV chapel! So come and get it!”

          We came to get it. It was a traditional Tortoiselander evening. The TV was on, and the pizza was going around. Sweet ropy smoke filled the air.

          “It’s Sister Jenny’s turn to load the bong!”

          “Load the bong!”

          “Shh… shh… the show’s starting…”

          The TV played a cheerful tune and announced, “Broadcasting From The Summit!” And the party was on!

          “Go! Scoot!” uncle-cubed said to me. “Go and finish recycling the cans!”

          So I drifted out to the kitchen and began stomping root beer cans flat, one after another after another after another. For some reason I felt dizzy and a bit dazed.

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

The ancient Tortoiselander said, “I know what you’re thinking. I can read it right off the top of your mind. You’re thinking ‘contact high’, aren’t you? Yes, you are! Well, let me tell you, young man, that there is an ancient Tortoiseland proverb concerning contact highs. It goes: TANSTAACH!”

Fascinated (for I had been thinking just that!) I said, “What does that mean?”

“There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Contact High!”

“Oh, wow!” I exclaimed.

“Don’t you agree?” he queried.

Dazed and a bit dizzy, I nodded, and he continued.

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

While Ertson, the Patrobe, evoked the volcano spirit, I was stomping cans flat.

“All hail Kah-Pey the all-powerful!”

STOMP!

“All hail Kah-Pey the all-wise!”

STOMP!

“All hail Kah-Pey the all-merciful!”

STOMP!

“All hail - “

STOMP!

I picked up another can and set it down.

STOMP!

Then I noticed that something was wrong. I hollered, “Hey, what’s happened to the set?”

Brother Tom called back, “It’s busted!”

I walked back to the TV chapel. Snow filled the screen. The speakers went HSSSSSSS…

Bother Tom said, “Oh fnord. I’ll fix it.” He went to the set, twiddled knobs, and pushed buttons. No effect. He banged the set on its side. That didn’t work either. He changed channels. “That funny, all the other channels are OK.”

That was when we all realized…

And just at that moment, we heard;

 

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

“All hail Kaboom!” Sam crowed. “The Pimple has popped!”

Sister Jenny Shark stood up. It was her turn now.

“Exterior camera,” she ordered. “Quick!”

And we obeyed. Fast. We scampered to our stations.

Exterior camera showed that, yes indeed, the entire mountain had exploded. Smoke and fire churned skywards. The noise was thunderous. Then the ground shook.

“Hurry up, hurry up!” Jenny Shark ordered. “Shut the dome!”

Despite the confusion, we somehow got the machinery working, and with a loud WHIRRRR, the huge steel hemispherical dome started to close shut. We could see it on the cameras from inside; the dome was big enough to cover our entire commune.

KLANGG!

“Dome sealed!” Brother Tom announced.

“Switch to secondary camera!” said Jenny Shark.

“Switching!” I said from my post. The screens switched from dome-interior to another view of the eruption.

Uncle Ted hollered “Incoming!”

Pebbles, rocks and (judging by the dents) several large boulders caromed off the dome. Our secondary exterior camera was flattened instantly.

“Brace yourself!” Sister Jenny Shark announced from the seismographs. “It ain’t done blowin’!”

And the ground shook hard…

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

“Well…” said the ancient Toroiselander. “To make a long story short… somehow we survived.”

He and I were walking uphill in hot air, puffing hard.

“It wasn’t easy. When the eruptions ended, we had to dig ourselves out of rock and ashfall; and for weeks afterward, we had to endure dust, gloom, darkness, and unseasonable cold.”

The air was heavy with a stench like smoke and rotten eggs.

“But all that eventually cleared up, and the harvests were good for decades afterwards; for volcanic ash makes fertile soil.”

The ancient Tortoiselander and I topped a ridge. “Behold Kah-Pey!” he announced, and I look down.

And I looked across.

And I looked afar.

And after a long while I said, “That’s a damn big caldera.”

My guide nodded. “The eruptions left behind nothing but this; a huge smoking lava pit.”

We stared a long time down at the inferno.

There was a sign posted on the ridge with us. It boasted:

 

Behold Kah-Pey!

The biggest volcano on the continent!

mountain

crater

 

The sign was signed: Hareland Chamber of Commerce.

 

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

 

          Much later, Sam said, “Old Jack Flash wasn’t a big a fool as he looked, for he put his mansion far, far away from the Pimple! But for all that, I’ll give him this; he never missed a ceremony. Too bad it never blew up on the bastard!”

          “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Uncle Ted said quietly.

          Sam said, “What’s that supposed to mean? You think I liked seeing crooks and fools being blasted to smithereens?”

          Ted asked, “Well, didn’t you?”

          Sam raged, “You bet I did!”

          Ted said, “Absolute pacifist passive non-violence creed.”

          “Not me!” Jenny Shark chimed in.

          My uncle’s uncle’s uncle said, “It was their own damn fault! Capping a volcano; what a hare-brained scheme!”

          Jenny Shark said, “It ain’t nice to fool Mother Nature!”

          Uncle-cubed said, “That’s right! It was the biggest time-bomb on the continent, and every greedy fool rushed towards it! But that’s O.K., they all died, thus improving the human race. All hail Kah-Pey!”

          But Uncle Ted smiled and said, “No, uncle-squared. It wasn’t like that, at all.”

          “What’s that supposed to mean?”

          “Let me show you,” said Uncle Ted, peeking over his mirror shades. “I have the tape right here.”

          He played a video recording for us. It was the party they were televising from the tip of Mount Kah-Pey when it exploded. “Now, do you see something funny here?” Uncle Ted asked me.

          “Funny, how?” I asked back.

          “I’ll play this part in slow motion,” he said, pushing buttons. I watched the image slow down; so did uncle-cubed, and so did Jenny Shark. “Do you see anything… odd? Out of place? You better look hard, ‘cause you didn’t see it last time.”

          I looked hard. Then I giggled and said, “Oh, I get it!”

          Sam grumbled, “What is it, what is it?”

          I said, “Look at the dance floor! Look who’s dancing!”

          Sam squinted. “That’s Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers??”

          Uncle Ted said, “And look who’s conducting the orchestra.”

          Jenny Shark yowled, “Bugs Bunny?!”

          “And look at all those little blue guys waiting tables.”

          Sam roared, “They’re SMURFS!”

          I said, “Look, Uncle Ted, there you are! How can you be in two places at once?”

          “When you’re not anywhere at all,” he replied. “You see, I was the last one there. The others were already gone before I finished hacking these glitches into the transmission program.”

          Sam reached up and spun his propeller beanie to a blur.

          “You mean that broadcast was all a fake? A computerized counterfeit?” Jenny Shark wanted to know.

          Uncle Ted nodded. “A cybernetic simulation.” He gestured at the party on the video screen. “None of this really happened. In fact the mountain was deserted. There wasn’t a living soul for miles around.” He grimaced. “Except me.” He shook his head in disgust at his own stupidity.

          Jenny Shark pursued, “So the big ruling-class Hareland macho trip was a sham? They didn’t want to risk being blown away, they just wanted us to think they risked being blown away?”

          “Of course,” said Uncle Ted. “They aren’t fools.”

          “No, not fools, just liars!” Jenny Shark complained. “So all that damn volcano blew up was a bunch of video ghosts!”

          Sam gripped his cane. He rose to his feet. Quivering with rage, he swore, “Purity!”

          But Uncle Ted just laughed.

          “Politics,” he explained.