“Feast your eyes upon that, Matthew!  Can you believe it?  We’re here!  We’re really here!  The City of Lights!  The City that Never Sleeps!  It’s been called both the Forbidden City and the Queen of the Adriatic!  This is the oldest city in the world.  It’s almost TWO THOUSAND years old!  Can you even imagine that?  And of course, the world’s oldest city is also its biggest.  There are more people here than in London, Paris, and Moscow combined.  It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it?  We’re certainly not in Kansas anymore, I can tell you that.

“But that’s not what’s really important.  After all, we didn’t travel thirty thousand miles just to quote a bunch of statistics, right Matthew?  All that’s just the backdrop for the real reason we came here: adventure.  I mean, when you think about it, it only makes sense.  With all that history there must have been tons of interesting things that happened here over the years.  No one even knows just how many wild stories have been created in this amazing place.  And that’s not all in the past, no sir, don’t you even think that for a second.  A city like this can’t decline like that.  That’s just not the way things work.  Nope, there’s just as much excitement and intrigue here as there always has been, and it’s enough to make those posers like New York and Chicago look like those innocent little villages where everyone knows each other’s name and they’re all inbred and such.  This is the true city of mystery.  That’s what we’re here to find.

“So this is it, Matthew.  The big one.  Rome.”

Matthew sighed.  Matthew sighed often.  He could no longer remember if he had always been such a prolific sigher, or if it was only since he met Jack.  Then, because Jack was observing a rare moment of silence for the sake of their glorious surroundings and because Matthew was not sure where to begin with the forest of errors that had marred his friend’s little speech, he sighed again.  “Actually,” he muttered, “we’re in Vatican City.”

“Oh?”  The viewing platform at the top of St. Peter’s Basilica was packed with tourists, most of whom were carrying on conversations in a variety of different languages, so an uneducated observer might have thought that it was impossible for Jack to have heard what his friend just said.  What that uneducated observer would be unaware of, however, is the fact that they had been friends for so long that they had become almost supernaturally attuned to one another.  One of the benefits of this attunement was that Jack was able to pick out the unique frequency of Matthew’s low, somber tones no matter how much background noise was around to interfere.

“That’s even better!” Jack declared triumphantly a few moments later.  He never let being wrong slow him down for very long.  Jack made mistakes frequently, and he was well aware of this fact.  He also knew that everyone, even a genius, can and does make mistakes.  One of the core principles of his philosophy of life was based on the fact that, while being wrong is unavoidable, if one is able to keep moving quickly enough, then one is at least never wrong for any great length of time.

“Don’t you see?  Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church.  Always has been, always will be.  They say that Jesus himself started building the city—he was a carpenter, you know—back in the Middle Ages, when he wasn’t busy curing the Black Death and whatnot.  Now, that may not be entirely true, but think about it for a second.  If the truth is even one-quarter of the rumor it would still be pretty damn impressive, don’t you think?  And believe me, there’s plenty more stories where that came from.

“Of course, everyone knows that the Catholic Church is also the most secretive religion on Earth.  Who can guess how many secrets have been sealed within these hallowed walls?  Millions?  Billions?  Like when they pick a new pope, for example.  All the priests and bishops and cardinals and what have you from all over the world come here to this very church to make the decision.  The guards shut and lock the doors, and then they’re trapped in there for weeks, months, sometimes even years, unable to leave or have any contact with the outside world whatsoever until they choose the next leader of their church.  No one knows how they do it.  Is it a battle of wits?  A fight to the death?  Or the greatest rock-paper-scissors tournament of all time?  The new pope swears them all to secrecy, so even after they leave they can’t tell a single soul, living or dead, what goes on in there.  Can you imagine what it would be like to be the first outsiders to discover the truth?  Doesn’t the awesome power of that revelation rock you to your very core?

“See, I read in this book once . . .”

Matthew sighed again.  He had an extremely expressive sigh.  No one could hear it without being moved to reflection and sadness.  No one, of course, except Jack.

“Can we get down from here now?” Matthew asked quietly, when the story of alien abductions and long-lost identical twins reached a point where he could interrupt.  He was not normally afraid of heights, but Jack was in one of his dramatic gesturing moods, and the crowded balcony did not leave him any room to dodge.

“Huh?” Jack asked, glancing at his watch.  “You’re right!” he declared.  “We have so much more to do.  We can’t afford to waste any more time here.

“Just you wait,” Jack said as they descended the awkward, zigzagging staircase on the inside of the dome.  “Something’s going to happen to us.  Something amazing.  Something you never even thought was possible.  I guarantee it.  Rome?  Vatican City?  Whatever it is, I won’t let it let us down.”

“Raaaaargh!”

Jon leaned over in his chair and glared downward.  There it was, staring up at him, seeming almost to smile at his frustration.  It did not look embarrassed or ashamed at its repeated failures.  All it did was blink, the soft, repetitive glow saying, “You are at my mercy.  You cannot go on without my help.  And, at this particular moment, for reasons that you are completely incapable of understanding, I have no desire whatsoever to provide this help.”

He turned back to face his computer screen, because looking at his uncooperative printer was making him too mad.  The floor was a dangerous location for an old machine like that, not because there was a risk of anyone accidentally stepping on it (Jon was the only person who ever entered his room, and there was no reason for him to walk in that space), but because every time it printed everything blurry, or with random extra black lines, or failed to print a certain color, or just refused to print altogether, it became more and more difficult to resist the urge to kick it.

This rebellious printer was not Jon’s only option.  There were plenty available in the library, and as long as he didn’t go during peak hours he would be able to get one to use fairly easily.  The school did not even charge students to print things out, as long as they were under a certain length.  It was not raining that day, and Jon had been cooped up inside the apartment for quite a while, so he really could have used the fresh air and exercise.

But it was the principle of the thing that was important.  He owned that printer, and had for a very long time.  It answered to him.  If he let it get away with this mutiny, then the entire chain of command would break down.  Other devices might decide that they could simply stop doing their work out of sheer laziness or spite, just like the printer.  There was nothing else for it.  Jon had to assert his authority to maintain order, and the only way to do that was to get his printer to print his document, no matter how many times it took.  Jon, by the way, did not normally believe (at least, not very strongly) that devices such as his printer or his computer had wills of their own, but by that point, as you can probably guess, he was running on very little sleep.

Unfortunately, Jon did not know enough about electronics to attempt any sort of troubleshooting for the printer, so all he could do was go to the menu and instruct it to print again, just as he had done the six times directly preceding this effort.  The computer beeped.  The wheels and other infernal devices in the damned printer started to whir.  A single sheet of paper was sucked down into its maw.  Printing began.  Then, a few moments later, the result emerged, but it was error-ridden once again.  This time the printer had decided to only print every other line.  Jon’s paper was double-spaced, but, unluckily for him, rather than skipping all the spaces that were blank anyway, the printer had decided to leave out all the ones with text.  And then, just to ensure that the page that went through before Jon stopped the process could not be reused, it put a bunch of meaningless characters at the bottom.  Jon was running low on paper.

“RAAAAARGH!”

Jon spent a few more minutes letting out some words that were considerably more inappropriate than “raaaaargh” before he was interrupted by the sound of feet coming up the stairs.  Dave poked his head tentatively in the doorway.  “You okay, man?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Jon replied.  He must have been shouting much more loudly than he had thought, because as far as he knew Dave and Jordan had been in the basement.  Jon was not sure which was more worrisome: the fact that one of his roommates had entered his room, or that he appeared to be concerned about him.  “I’m just having a little trouble with my printer.”

“Printer trouble?” asked Jordan, who suddenly appeared from the other side of the door and walked into the room.  “You must teach it discipline.”

“Sure,” said Jon.  Right at that moment he was less focused on the familiar problem of getting his printer to work than he was on the unfamiliar problem of getting his roommates out of his room.

“Jordan’s right,” said Dave.  “You have to threaten it if you want it to do what you command.”

“Threaten it?” Jon asked.  He had, of course, threatened his printer many, many times before, but Dave seemed to be suggesting that it would accomplish something more than just relieving frustration.

“Sure,” said Dave, in a very different tone than when Jon had just said it.

“Take up your blade,” said Jordan, pointing to the foil leaning against the wall.

Jon picked up his sword and brandished it at the printer.  He did not expect it to help, but it was satisfying.

“Stab it too,” said Dave.

“No, I think it’s, uh, learned its lesson,” said Jon.  “I’m just going to try printing again now.”

A little while later, Dave and Jordan were sitting on the couch, discussing what they had just seen.  “I told him to stab it,” Dave said.  “If he had just done that . . .”

“Still,” said Jordan, “it was an effective threat.  No machine would dare to defy him after that.”

He glanced out the window at a spot that was directly below Jon’s room.  A pile of plastic and metal that may once have resembled a printer lay there.

“Think we should let him use our printer?” Dave asked.

“And if it makes a mistake . . .”

“Yikes.  That’s a good point.”

“Just let him walk to the library,” said Jordan.  “He may need to blow off some steam.”

Jon was sure that he was going insane.

Dave and Jordan were gone for the weekend.  Jon had no idea where they had gone; he had only made sure to ask the “when,” skipping “where” and “why.”  He was very glad of this, as he had a large amount of homework that needed to be taken care of.  The library was available, but it was supposed to rain all weekend long, so the ability to get his work done in peace and quiet without having to leave his apartment was much appreciated.

But . . . he couldn’t concentrate.  Every time he started to type he got out only a few words before he stopped, as if he was expecting something.  Every time he opened a book to read he got no further than the first paragraph before pausing, as if he had heard something.  Jon started to think that he was being interrupted by the silence, but that made no sense at all.

After a few hours of attempting to get something accomplished on all of his various projects and failing at every single one, he went downstairs.  He told himself it was just to get something to eat, but he knew that he wasn’t that hungry and that there probably wasn’t anything he’d want to eat in the kitchen anyway.  Next to the kitchen, however, was the living room.  Telling himself that he was simply testing the theory that the silence was somehow bothering him, Jon flipped on the TV.

A talk show came on.  He quickly flipped it off, thinking that he was just wasting time and electricity, but in those few seconds he realized that he felt slightly more at ease with the television on.  Now he knew he was going crazy.  What kind of person can’t concentrate unless the TV is on?  Had he really become so accustomed to it being on that he couldn’t stand the silence?  It was ridiculous.  He thrust the remote back down onto the couch and returned to his room.

Ten minutes later he came back downstairs.  He turned the TV back on.  Jon set the volume so that it was just loud enough for him to hear upstairs and began to walk away, but something was wrong.  He still felt strangely ill at ease.  Considering the problem for a bit, Jon began to wonder if the choice of program mattered.  Dave and Jordan would never watch a talk show.  Was he so accustomed to their television habits that he was unable to settle down unless something that they would watch was on?

Jon rotated through the channels (good god, why were there so many channels?  Was he paying for this?) until he found a ridiculous, mindless action film.  To make the illusion more true to life, he turned the volume up several notches . . . and then several more.  The sounds of gunfire, explosions, and dialogue that really wasn’t worth the time it took to speak it filled the room.  Jon felt comforted.  He felt at home.  He felt like after he finished his homework he was definitely going to have to look into getting one of those rooms with the padded walls where they make you wear those awkward jackets.

His problem solved, Jon went back to the homework grindstone.  He got a few paragraphs written.  He read a few pages from his textbooks.  And yet . . . something still wasn’t right.  Shutting the door to block out the noise helped (Jon had no idea why he had to turn up the volume and then shield himself from the extra noise, but it worked), but even then he wasn’t able to work as effectively as he usually could.  Something was missing.

With a surge of concern for his own sanity, Jon realized that it wasn’t the noise that he had been missing; it was his roommates.  The human brain has an amazing ability to adapt to situations, no matter how unfamiliar or uncomfortable.  Unfortunately, it seemed that in this situation Jon’s brain had adapted so well to the burden of his roommates that it now felt wrong when they weren’t around.  Jon shook his head.  He had survived midterms, only to be brought to his knees by a road trip or whatever Dave and Jordan were off doing.

So what was still missing?  What did he need to make his brain believe that his stupid roommates were still at home?  Then he got it.  That was what he needed: stupidity.  Dave and Jordan didn’t just turn up the TV to a ridiculous volume; they also had ridiculously petty arguments about how the TV would be used.  And with no one else around, he would have to have the argument with himself.

“Hey!” he yelled, doing a poor but still somewhat effective job of imitating Dave’s voice.  He almost stopped at that point, because he was an intelligent person and there was no earthly reason why he should have to do something so idiotic.  But it’s amazing how desperate an intelligent person can be for a little idiocy.  “It’s my turn to pick, and I think we should play, uh, Alien Death . . . Extravaganza!”

“No,” Jon argued back, shifting into Jordan’s deeper tones.  “We’re watching Blazing Guns of Glory . . . With Explosions . . . Five!”

“Then I guess there’s only one way to settle this,” said Jon (as Dave).

“Indeed,” said Jordan/Jon.  “We must now begin the ritual of . . . Ultimate Television Selection Powers . . . of Doom . . . to the Death!”

Jon was just about to lunge at . . . himself when a loud shout rang out.  “Would you two stop this nonsense?” the voice cried.  “I’m trying to get some work done up here!”  It took him almost a minute to realize that the voice was his.

“I really am crazy,” he said.  Then he went upstairs and finally got going on his work.

“Are you sure it’s behind the couch?”

“Of course it’s behind the couch. Where else could it possibly be?”

“Did you check under the couch cushions?”

“Of course I checked under the couch cushions. Now are you going to shut up and help me look, or are you going to just sit there and . . . hang on, I think I’ve got . . . something . . .”

Dave lifted his arm slowly out from behind the couch. The object in his hand was not the remote control they had been searching for. It was not, in fact, a remote control at all, but it was something that was plenty capable of helping them to temporarily forget that they were unable to watch television.

“It’s a sword,” Jordan pointed out as he stared at it, mesmerized.

“Yeah,” Dave agreed. He gripped it by the handle and rotated it slowly in his hand, watching the light reflecting off it. “It’s a fencing sword, I think,” he added, tapping his finger on the rubber tip and then sliding it down the rest of the blade to see if it was actually sharp anywhere. It wasn’t, but in Dave’s mind that did not make it any less awesome.

“Where did it come from?” Jordan asked.

“From behind the couch. Duh. Weren’t you watching?”

“No,” said Jordan. He was so fascinated by the weapon that he even forgot to punch Dave in the arm for being a smart aleck. “How did it get there?” He frowned. “You don’t suppose it belongs to Jon, do you?”

Dave laughed. “Yeah right! Jon? Owning something as cool as this? I don’t think so. It must have been placed here by some higher power, lying dormant until its true master came along to claim it.”

Jordan’s frown deepened. “Hey, what do you mean, ‘true master?’ Why should you get to keep it?”

“Because I’m the one that found it, obviously,” Dave replied, still staring at his prize. “Haven’t you ever heard of ‘Finders Keepers?’” he explained, as if he was citing a major Supreme Court case.

“That doesn’t mean you were destined to have it,” Jordan argued. He stood and approached the couch, flexing his arms menacingly. “You just stumbled on it randomly. You were looking for the remote control.”

“Dude, don’t you remember the story of King Arthur?” asked Dave, who remembered it from the cartoon movie, not the book he was supposed to have read in high school. “He didn’t know that the sword was special. He was just looking for any old sword. But he pulled it out of the stone, so he got to be King of the Britons. This is exactly the same deal. Quid. Pro. Quo.”

“I bet even King Arthur would have had to give up the sword if someone fought him for it,” Jordan said.

“You want to fight?” Dave asked, standing up and holding the sword out, shielding himself from the potential attack.

“You can’t use the sword in a fight to see who gets the sword!”

“Oh can’t I? You think you can stop me?”

“You want me to stop you?”

“Yeah, I’d like to see you try to stop me.”

“STOP!!!!”

Dave and Jordan both paused, one with sword in mid-swing and the other with palms raised to catch it ninja-style. They turned toward the entryway. Jon was standing there, his eyes wild. “Put. The sword. Down.”

The voice was so much more authoritative than what they were used to hearing from Jon that they complied immediately. Dave set the sword down on the couch without a second thought. Even Jordan, who hadn’t specifically been told to do anything, lowered his hands and looked guilty. Jon walked over to the couch, and some of the color returned to his face. “Where did you find this?” he asked, his voice significantly calmer once the sword was back in his hands.

“Behind the couch,” Dave answered meekly.

“How did it end up back there?” Jon wondered aloud.

“Hang on,” said Jordan, when he had worked up the courage to speak. “This is your fencing saber?”

“It’s a foil,” Jon replied reflexively. “But yes, it’s mine.”

“You fence?” Dave asked.

Jon sighed. “I used to. Haven’t had any time since I started college, as you can probably tell by the fact that this ended up behind the couch.”

“Oh,” said Dave. “That’s cool.”

“What?” Jon asked. He wondered if he was slightly delirious from the shock of seeing his roommates playing with his hundred-dollar foil. It was rare that anyone said that he or anything he did was cool, and hearing the phrase coming from Dave was doubly surprising.

“That’s . . . really cool,” repeated Dave, who also seemed a little bit uncomfortable with the unfamiliar wording (unfamiliar when directed at Jon, at least).

“Thanks,” Jon said. He gripped the foil by the handle and rotated it slowly in his hand, watching the light reflecting off it.

“So, can we—” Dave began.

“No,” said Jon.

“You don’t even know what he was going to ask,” said Jordan.

“Yes I do,” said Jon, “and you can’t borrow it. Not even just to look at it. Do you have any idea how much this cost?” Dave and Jordan had no idea. They still thought of it as a magic sword of destiny, which of course would be invaluable.

Jon saw the disappointed looks on their faces and thought. “But you can have a snack,” he said at last.

“Huh?” Dave asked.

“A snack,” Jon said, heading toward the stairs, foil in hand. “You have snacks, right? Don’t you keep them in that cupboard on the right above the sink?”

Jon walked up the stairs to his room, feeling unusually pleased with himself. He had found his missing foil, and he had done his good deed for the day. Jordan opened the right-hand cupboard above the sink, expecting to find only chips, and he located the missing TV remote.

Jon was hungry.  It was the middle of the night, and he was trying to get another paper finished.  It was also eleven hours since he had last eaten something.  Jon hated to interrupt the paper-writing process, especially when he was so close to done, but he also knew that his mental functions started to decline sharply when he got this hungry.  Jon understood how the human body worked, and he always reluctantly gave in to its necessities, provided, of course, that they were actually necessary.

So it was that he proceeded down into the kitchen area, searching for something to eat.  There was always food there, but if you only count things that Jon was willing to eat, there was never very much.  Still, he figured that he would probably be able to find something.  This thought may very well have been a sign that the combination of lack of food and lack of sleep was starting to affect his brain processes.  The fact that he was trying to do this search without first turning on the lights definitely was.

Jon stepped in something sticky.  He groaned.  Jon believed that keeping a house clean was important at all times, not just in case anyone came over to visit but because a clean home went hand in hand with a happy mood.  This was why he, among other things, never wore shoes inside the house.  While this certainly decreased the amount of mud and dirt that ended up on the floors, it was also a policy that Jon frequently ended up regretting, most frequently when he was walking through the kitchen.

Hopping on one foot to keep from spreading the stickiness anywhere else (and, just for good measure, cursing), Jon worked his way back to the light switch and flipped it on.  Then he swore more loudly and let his foot drop back to the floor, because it was clear that there was no point in trying to contain the mess.  It was everywhere.  A multi-colored flow of liquid had spread almost the entire length and width of the kitchen floor, and it was edging its way toward the carpeted areas of the apartment.  It had gotten to the point where paper towels were no longer an option; he would need sandbags.

A couple seconds’ inspection was all it took to see that the source of the flood was their refrigerators.  The sticky substance was slowly oozing out of all four of them.  Jon had always thought that having four fridges for three people was somewhat ridiculous.  He might have been able to understand if they were full of alcohol.  Jon did not really drink himself, but he knew that it was something that college students did, and he felt that he could handle that idea.  The fridges in his apartment, however, generally contained an assortment of food that had no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever.  Most often it was vast quantities of leftovers that had been scavenged from God only knew where (much like the fridges themselves, Jon had always assumed).  These were often poorly contained, and they were never eaten quickly enough, meaning that it was always up to Jon to clear out anything that appeared to be growing mold or sentience or anything like that.  It was a battle that never ended; every time he carried out a series of trays or plates or whatever, by the next day they had been replaced by something else.

Removing his socks, Jon gingerly stepped through the gunk to see what his roommates’ penchant for acquiring free food had wrought this time.  He opened one fridge.  He stared.  Then he opened another and saw the same thing.  Just to make sure, he checked the other two, but they were no different.  All four of them were jam-packed with gallon tubs of ice cream.

Jon was not amused.

He tiptoed back out of the kitchen, wiped his feet off with a paper towel, and went over to the door to the basement room that his roommates shared.  They would still be up, of course, playing video games on into the night.  Jon wished they weren’t, just so that he could rudely awaken them.  “Dave!  Jordan!” he shouted.  “Get up here!”

There was a brief pause, filled not with the sounds of sleepy people struggling to understand why they were being pulled from a wonderful state of sleep but of aliens or terrorists being shot by bullets or lasers or whatever.  Then the heads of his two roommates appeared at the bottom of the stairs.  “What is it?” Dave asked.

“Did you two by any chance pick up a large quantity of ice cream today?”

“It was left over from a party they were having for prospective applicants,” Dave explained.  “No one else wanted it, so we got it all for free.  You can have some, if you want.”

Jon was lactose-intolerant, almost as seriously as he was roommate-idiocy-intolerant.  “And then you put it all in our fridges?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jordan said simply.

“Not freezers,” Jon went on, his voice rising in pitch, “but fridges.”

“What are you trying to say?” Dave asked innocently.

“That it’s melting all over the floor, you morons!” Jon roared.

Their eyes went wide.  “Oh no,” Dave said hollowly.

“We have no time to lose,” said Jordan, and the two of them quickly bounded up the stairs.

Jon was shocked.  As they passed, he asked, “So . . . you’re going to clean it up?”

“No,” Dave replied, rolling his eyes at this crazy talk.  “We have to eat everything that’s left before that melts too!”

“Waste not, want not,” agreed Jordan, pulling open a fridge and removing a very sticky-looking container of ice cream.

Jon tried more shouting.  He tried threats.  He tried promising to buy them new ice cream.  Nothing got through.  So he trudged sadly back up the stairs, knowing that he now had two tasks to complete before he could sleep.

Jon was in a good mood.  It was the weekend, and his midterm exams were finally over, so he had absolutely nothing to worry about for a couple of days.  No homework, no reading, no studying, no papers.  His freedom had made him lighthearted, at times almost giddy.  For the first time in weeks he was able to smile rather than grimace, greet people pleasantly, and laugh at all . . .

. . . which was precisely why Dave and Jordan were so concerned.  They had never seen Jon like this before.  The Jon they knew was permanently grouchy.  Jon was supposed to stomp.  Jon was supposed to yell.  Jon was supposed to be surrounded by a “No-Fun Zone” twenty-four hours a day.  But ever since he had gotten out of class two days ago, none of those regular events had occurred even once.  It was like turning on your favorite TV program to discover that one of the actors has been replaced; they had no idea what to expect.

The most unusual thing was the box of cookies that had appeared on the kitchen counter that morning.  “I don’t get it,” said Dave.  “Where did these come from?”  Dave and Jordan did all their own shopping, because their tastes did not mesh well with Jon’s.  He liked yogurt and vegetables and things that had soy in them but weren’t soy sauce; their five food groups were meat, dessert, dairy, starch, and meat again, in that order.  The idea that Jon would bring chocolate chip cookies to the apartment was almost inconceivable.

“They look homemade,” Jordan noted as he peered through the box’s transparent sides.  This, too, did not fit the profile of the Jon they were familiar with.  As far as they knew, he had no cooking abilities whatsoever.  Since he was always in a hurry, he survived primarily on meals that required no preparation more complicated than a minute or two in the microwave.  The apartment had an oven, but they had never seen him use it.  And yet . . . there the cookies were.

“Well,” Dave said, after the two of them had spent a minute or two in silent contemplation of the baked goods, “I guess we can try one.”

“Wait!” Jordan cried.  “Your carelessness will be your undoing!”

“Wh-what?” asked Dave.  “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you see?  This could all be a trap!”

“Trap?”  Dave sounded quite puzzled.  “They’re just cookies . . .”

“No,” said Jordan in a firm tone.  “You’re missing the point.  It’s not just the cookies.  His whole attitude has changed.  It’s all connected.  He’s been acting nice to us just to lure us into a false sense of security.  Then he puts this box of cookies here, as if it was a gift to make up for all the troublesome ordeals he’s put us through.  Not suspecting any foul play, we eat the cookies, and then we will have played right into his hands.  It is the perfect snare.”

“Hmm,” Dave said thoughtfully.  “He does know that we like cookies.”

“And that we would most likely be unable to restrain ourselves when presented with free ones,” Jordan added.

“I still don’t see what the trap could be, though.”

“Does Jon not seem like the type to resort to poisoning his enemies?”

“Poison?  Come on.  You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“Am I?  So are you willing to try eating one, then?  You think there’s even a possibility that he wouldn’t take this perfect opportunity to destroy us, after all the difficulties we’ve caused for each other?  Do you trust him with your life?”

Dave hesitated.  “Well . . . I guess we can’t even really be sure that it was Jon that put them here.  It could have been anybody.  I’m not going to eat something that just anyone could have left here.”

“A wise choice.”

“But . . . now I’m hungry.”

“Me too.  Should we go out to get something?”

“Alright, but you’re buying, because you’re the one that decided we weren’t going to eat the cookies.”

“If you want to stay here and risk eating a poisoned cookie, be my guest . . .”

Jon chuckled.  He had heard the entire conversation.  Normally his door was closed at all times other than when he was walking through the doorway, but once his exams were over he no longer had any need to seal himself into a cocoon for studying purposes, so he left it open.  He had originally done it to help improve the airflow, but as it turned out there were other benefits as well.  Sure, the walls and floors were thin, but if the door wasn’t open he might not have been able to hear all the details of his roommates’ silliness.

He went downstairs to investigate the mysterious cookie box once he heard them leave the apartment.  Jon knew that he had not left it there, and after hearing his usually greedy roommates convince themselves not to eat the free cookies he was very curious to find out who had.  There was no note on the container itself, nor could he see one anywhere on the counter nearby.  He could not remember anyone having visited the apartment recently, nor could he think of anyone who would have a particular reason to bring cookies for them.  Thinking that there might be a note inside the box that they were too afraid to open, he lifted the lid.

Jon heard a soft SNAP, followed by a brief hissing noise.  After that he was distracted by an unbearably horrible smell that came out of the box.  As he ran back to his room, he thought, “So it was a trap.”

Jon may not have bothered to stick around to look, but as it turned out there was a note inside.  It read:

“Dear Jon.  Congratulations on finishing all your midterms.  But don’t forget who you really are.  Sincerely, your two favorite roommates.

P.S.  Got you.”

“So,” said Dave, as he rose slowly from the couch and backed away a couple of steps.  “It’s come to this.”

“It has,” agreed Jordan.  He followed suit, leaving the two of them standing at opposite ends of the coffee table, fiercely staring each other down.

“Well?” said Dave after a tense couple of silent minutes.  “Why don’t you start it?”

Jordan shook his head gravely.  “This is a sacred rite,” he said.  “It must be started by a neutral party to be legitimate.”

“Fine.”  Dave glanced around the room, and, failing to find someone who could be neutral on the basis of liking them both equally, fell back on the alternative: someone who disliked them equally.  “Hey Jon!” he shouted in the direction of the staircase.

The walls and floors of the apartment were not terribly thick, so they could hear a couple of muffled curse words before the upstairs door swung open.  “What?” Jon called back.

“Could you come down here for a sec?  We need you.”

There was a brief pause, during which Jon calculated the odds of this problem simply going away if he ignored it.  When the answer came out to be somewhere less than zero, he began his usual angry stomp down the stairs.  “This had better be quick,” he grumbled as he entered the living room.  “This ten-page paper I’m working on is due tomorrow, I hope you know.”

“It will only take a moment,” said Jordan.  “We need you to start.”

“Start?” Jon asked, his natural curiosity overcoming his better judgment.  “Start what?”

“The duel,” Dave explained.

Jordan and Dave were locked in that age-old struggle: who would get control of the television?  Dave wanted to watch a movie on the DVD player.  Jordan wanted to watch one of his favorite TV programs.  Being poor college students, of course, they only had the one television set and, even more importantly, the one couch.  Only one man could have his way.  They had tried to come up with a peaceful solution, but in the end all negotiations failed.  The only thing left was to fight it out, each man wielding the emblem (remote control) of the side he was championing.  The last one left standing would rule the TV . . . until the next time the two of them came into conflict.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Jon.  It was hard to decide which was worse: the fact that his roommates were actually going to fight each other over something as trivial as who got to pick what to watch, or that this monumentally foolish waste of time had to involve him.  “This is going to be really loud, isn’t it?  I’ll never get my paper done now.”

“We duel in silence,” said Jordan.

Jon was familiar with the phrase.  They played foosball “in silence,” which generally only ended up being about as loud as a jumbo jet landing next door.  But he had headphones, he had blankets to stuff under the door, he could pretend that the building was vibrating because of an earthquake.  And it wasn’t like things would go any better for him if he refused.  “So you just want me to say ‘En garde’ or something?” he asked resignedly.

“No,” said Dave.  “Do we look French to you?  You have to say ‘Fight,’ but you need to do it in a really cool way.”

“Fight,” Jon said in his most apathetic, tranquilizing tone.

“That’s no good,” said Dave, shaking his head.  “Say it like you’re some ninja kung fu master guy.”

“Fight-oh?” Jon tried.

This must have been good enough, because Jordan immediately lunged at Dave, who only barely managed to deflect the blow.  “You have fun with that,” Jon grumbled, though they were no longer listening.  “And could you at least try not to break anything?” he added as he went back up the stairs.

“I have the advantage,” said Jordan, as he swung his weapon in a broad arc over the table.

“Oh really?” said Dave, as he ducked and rolled around to the back side of the couch.  “How’s that?”

They had said that the fight would take place in silence, but that was only for Jon’s benefit; trash talking was a major component of the battle.  The Television Rite of Succession Duel, as it was known, was a serious affair, to be sure, but nowhere near as serious as a game of foosball, and thus it could be safely interrupted by talk.

“I have the larger weapon,” Jordan answered.  “Greater reach.”  He made a sweeping cut downward and almost caught Dave on the rebound when his arm deflected off the soft back of the couch.

“Hey, guys!” yelled Jon.  “I’m going to the library!  I’ll be back later!”  No one noticed.

“That may be true,” said Dave, “but my weapon is lighter, more nimble.  I can get in several attacks to every one of yours.”  He tried to demonstrate this by spinning around and getting in a few quick jabs, but Jordan retreated while attacking with a grace that belied his size.

The battle raged on for several more minutes, finally ending when Jordan, in a questionable maneuver, body slammed the couch to try to pin Dave.  He lost his weapon, allowing Dave the easy win with a tap on the forehead.  This brought the lifetime record to 23-20-2.

“There,” said Dave, “now we can finally . . . hey!  What’s going on?”

The television was already on and showing a nature program.  The letters “REC” featured prominently in the corner.  “Jon must have set it to record something,” Jordan said hollowly.

“Do you know how to make it stop?” asked Dave, pressing buttons frantically.

Jordan stared at his remote, as if realizing for the first time that it could be used for something other than combat.  “I don’t.”

They gazed at the television, out of their control until Jon came back.  “Truly,” said Dave, “we have been outmaneuvered by a master.”

Jon was not enjoying the rain.  The wind had twisted his cheap umbrella inside out a long time ago, meaning that he looked and felt more like a drowning victim than a normal person, but this was not his chief concern; the tattered remnants of his umbrella were being used to shield his backpack.  The weather report called for rain, so Jon had left his laptop at home, but now his textbooks, notebooks, and other paper-based school materials were in serious danger of becoming soggy to the point of being unreadable.  So it’s completely understandable that when he attempted to open his door and failed, he became a little agitated.

Checking first to make sure that he had undone the lock, Jon gripped the doorknob and heaved his weight against it.  The door moved inward, but only slightly; it quickly shut again with a strange bouncing motion that was accompanied by an even stranger squeaking sound that called to mind something made of rubber.  This did not reassure Jon at all.

He weighed his options.  He could try calling his roommates on the inside, but even if they answered there was no guarantee that it would produce the results he was looking for.  It certainly wasn’t likely to get the door open quickly.  No, this was one of those desperate times that called for desperate measures.  Jon walked back down the steps, took a deep breath, spat out the water that got in his mouth, and ran full speed at the door.

The door swung inward, sending a great quantity of . . . something flying, and was followed shortly afterward by Jon, who skidded, tripped on an unidentified object, and collapsed.  He kicked the door shut and then lay there for a few seconds, letting his brain recover so that he could figure out what the heck had just happened.  His first priority: identifying what he had landed on.  It was not, as he might have expected, the floor.

Jon picked up one of the things and stared at it.  “Shoes?” he asked blearily.  His head was a little fuzzy from the two recent impacts.  There were shoes under him.  There were shoes on the foosball table.  There were shoes on the back of the couch, where his two roommates were engaged in their usual afternoon activity: being glued to the TV for hours on end.  Or rather, where they had been gazing mindlessly at the television until Jon made his dramatic entrance.

But where had they come from?  The shoes, that is, not the roommates.  Jon owned three pairs of shoes, which was at least one pair more than either of the other two did, and yet there were dozens of shoes scattered around the room, none of which looked familiar.  When his own brain failed him, he was forced to put the question to the two men who were sitting on the couch, staring at him as if he had just gone berserk and knocked down the door, which, technically, he had.

“Why are there so many shoes here?” Jon asked.  At the moment he was too confused to even be mad.

“We’ve been collecting them,” Dave explained matter-of-factly.

“But . . . why?”

“They came to us,” said Jordan.

“But . . . what?”  Jon had known ahead of time how difficult it would be to get an answer out of these guys, but he hadn’t known how literally painful it would be when he tried to do it shortly after hitting his head.

“We don’t know where they came from,” said Dave.  He got up from the couch and very slowly, very carefully removed one of the shoes that had ended up between the poles on the foosball table, making sure not to disturb the position of a single player.  It was the most delicate thing Jon had ever seen him do.  Then Dave hurled the shoe into the corner by the door.

“They just started showing up in front of the place a while ago,” he continued while performing a slightly less precise extraction of a sneaker that had gotten wedged into one of the goals.  “Being carried along by the water running along the side of the street.  We figured that they’d just get ruined out there, and somebody might come looking for them, so we brought them inside.  We were going to put up a sign about it when the rain stopped.”

Very strange things were transpiring.  A multitude of shoes had mysteriously floated along the rain runoff to arrive in front of their door.  Even weirder, his roommates were acting selflessly.  Was this deluge actually the end of the world?  Jon tried to clear his head by shaking it, but all that he accomplished was to make Dave and Jordan cringe when some of the droplets from his hair went in the direction of the foosball table.  “And why were they all stacked right in front of the door?” he asked wearily.

“You always tell us to take off our shoes when we come into the house,” Jordan admonished him.

“Right.”  It didn’t make any sense, but Jon didn’t have the will to fight the nonsense at that point.  “I’m going to go upstairs now, to . . . study,” he said, though actually he felt like he needed a nap to allow his brain to reset after the madness.

The upstairs door shut quietly.  “Damn,” said Jordan.  “He’s going to yell at us to turn the volume down now, isn’t he?”

“When does he ever not?”  Dave shook his head.  “Man, I never expected him to actually body slam the door.  I’m kinda impressed.”

“Impressed enough to turn down the sound while he’s studying?”

Dave thought about it for a second.  “No.  You go tell your football buddies playing out there in the mud that we’re going to need their shoes a while longer.  I’m going to go pile them in front of his room so he can’t get out.”

CRACK

The dirty gray orb sailed across the (roughly) level green playing field.

CRACK

The orb was forcefully struck by a well-placed foot and immediately rocketed back in the opposite direction.

CRACK

Between the dramatic cracks that rang out almost constantly, the arena was filled with the steady squeaking of un-oiled metal rapidly rotating and shifting back and forth through plastic sheathes. And, during rare, brief moments of calm, one could even hear the simple sound of the ball rolling the length of the field, somehow dodging its way past all who stood before it, at long last dropping into the goal with a light THUD of finality that somehow managed to be louder than all the commotion that preceded it. For some, this was the sound of victory; for others, it represented humiliation and disgrace.

Beyond this there was no sound. The two generals who commanded the armies arrayed on the field never spoke, for they had no need. Their every order was communicated non-verbally, transmitted through their shoulders, arms, wrists, hands, fingers. There were no shouts of joy or groans of defeat, for these would have interrupted the flow of the match, and the flow of the match was a force more powerful than gravity and magnetism combined. And there certainly was no whirr of the metal rods spinning over and over in place, for spinning was a blasphemy so sacrilegious that it was believed that field itself would spontaneously crack down the middle if the word was even uttered in its presence.

Still, the field of battle was certainly a loud place, where most men’s senses would be completely deadened and even basic conversation would be awkward, if not impossible. The two mighty warriors, however, remained unperturbed. They were familiar with the sounds of battle. After all, they had been raised on the battlefield. No matter how titanic, how furious, how deafening the match became, they were still able to keep their full attention on the game.

Unfortunately, not everyone is capable of such feats of concentration.

If the two competitors had not been perfectly focused on the manipulation of their subordinates, they might have head the door slam upstairs. They may also have noticed someone stomping angrily down the steps one by one. They did pick up on the heavy sigh, but only because they had heard it so many times before, and even then only subconsciously. It only registered as an inexplicable sense of foreboding, and for a moment each one thought that the other was about to unleash some secret, unstoppable technique, leaving the victim powerless to prevent the end of the game.

Instead, the game ended in quite a different fashion.

“You know,” Jon began in a shout that was jarring more because of its level of indignation than its volume. For the first time since the match began, one of the two faltered and missed a shot that he should have easily made. The ball rolled past the misplaced defender, ricocheted off the wall, and slowly drifted to a halt in one of the corners. The flow of the game was broken. The match was, for all intents and purposes, over.

“I like sports as much as the next guy,” Jon continued, when he believed that he had his roommates’ full attention. This was, in fact, a lie. Jon had never cared for sports of any kind, from football to foosball. Sports were the opiate of the masses, the modern equivalent of the ancient Romans’ circuses, and their only purpose was to use flash to distract the ignorant from worrying about real problems. Professional sports were nothing more than a waste of time, but this did not bother Jon much. Except, of course, when the time being wasted was his.

“I understand why people would want to spend hundreds of dollars and hours waiting in line just to get tickets to the Super Bowl or the World Series or the Final Four.” He couldn’t, actually, and he knew he would have a hard time faking it, especially with those two, so he moved on. “But what I can’t understand is why you two are so obsessed with this stupid game that you’re still playing it at three o’clock in the morning!”

One of the two competitors finally opened his mouth. They had not remained silent for the sake of being polite and letting Jon finish speaking. It had just taken that long for them to recover from the shock of having the match come to such a sudden, unsatisfactory end. “Dude,” said Dave, “how many times have we told you not to interrupt us in the middle of the game?”

“I don’t know,” Jon responded angrily. “How many times have I told you not to play your dumb game when I’m trying to sleep? Let’s see . . . going at about five times a week . . . it must be almost thirty by now!”

“The game must go on,” said Jordan, who slowly loosened his grip on the table and leaned back into a normal standing position.

“But does it really have to go on right now?” Jon argued. “You know I have a test tomorrow morning!” His two roommates stared at him blankly. In the grand scheme of things, tests ranked very low on the importance scale, somewhere around getting enough sleep and remembering to return library books. Jon tried a different tactic. “And does it have to be this game? Can’t you play something quieter?” But the suggestion was pointless; Jon was pretty sure that they didn’t know how to play any quiet games.

“Fine!” he declared. “Then I’m taking this!” He reached down and seized the ball. Dave and Jordan protested vehemently, but to no avail. Jon took the dirty gray orb upstairs and slammed his door again. They couldn’t keep him from studying.

An unearthly hush fell over the battlefield. The two armies hung lifelessly from their poles. The game was over. Both sides had lost.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!  Not another one!”

Abigail and Theodore stood at the entrance to yet another tunnel of the ceremonial orange gates.  They were tired, cold, and hungry.  But the path went on nonetheless.

“Fear not,” said Theo, who strode into the semi-darkness like a person whose legs weren’t screaming in pain, though Abigail knew they must be if he had it even half as bad as she did.  “I am confident that our trial will soon be over.”

“Confident?” she asked, struggling to follow her quixotic brother.  She was so weary it was difficult to even use sarcasm.  “How can you be confident that we’re getting close to the exit?”  She realized a moment later that when he said “their trial” he could be talking about something completely different, but she preferred not to think about what that might be.

“I thought that would be obvious.  You passed the test.”

“What?”  Abigail was not sure which bothered her more: the fact that he was talking about some mysterious test, or the fact that he said “you” instead of “we.”

“When you first came here, you doubted the existence of the Fox God,” Theodore explained.  “You even mocked him or her,” he added reproachfully.  Abigail wondered how he could be reproachful at a time like this, but she did not have the breath to say anything about it.  “But now,” he continued, “after your experience in the shrine, you understand that the Fox God is real.  You believe.”

Abigail leaned on a post while she caught her breath.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.  It was a fact that she often (in fact, almost constantly) suspected was true, but only rarely was she certain enough to say it out loud.  “I still don’t believe in any ‘Fox God.’  That’s not what he wants, anyway.  I mean, it’s not what he would want, if he existed.  Or she.”

“What do you mean?” Theodore asked curiously.  “Isn’t the gathering of followers of primary importance to any god?”

It was a strange conversation, Abigail had to admit, at least for two people who knew nothing of theology, but she had certainly had weirder.  Plus the longer they talked the longer it would be before she had to walk again.  “Sure, it’s only natural that a deity would want to have as many believers as possible,” she said.  She was not concerned about incurring divine wrath by talking about gods as abstract entities rather than as revered supreme beings.  As far as she was concerned, things couldn’t get much worse.  “But you can’t convert an unbeliever with tricks and intimidation.”

“Of course you can,” her brother argued.  “Haven’t you witnessed the power of the Fox God with your very own eyes?”

“Ears, mostly,” she muttered.  “All I’ve really witnessed are a couple of conveniently timed gusts of wind and my own overactive imagination.  And my point,” she continued, wondering why she was bothering to make a point, “is that getting a person to say she believes just because you threaten her isn’t any good.  A believer who only says she believes because her house is going to get buried in brimstone if she doesn’t isn’t much of a believer at all.  It’s like extracting evidence under torture; the person will say anything she thinks you want to hear, whether it’s true or not, just to get it to stop.  The Fox God wasn’t trying to force me to believe, because he knows that wouldn’t count.  Or she.  If she existed, I mean.”

There was a pause before Theodore asked, “So what does the Fox God want?”  He actually looked concerned.  Did he really think that her saying “I believe” had anything to do with their ability to get home?  Or was he just putting on an act again?  And why did it always have to be so hard to tell?

“To mess with us.  The Fox God’s a trickster, right?  And I think that the joke’s probably almost done,” she added hopefully.  “I don’t think this Fox God is too cruel.  I caught a couple of guys desecrating the shrine earlier, and all he or she did was scare them a little.  I mean . . . oh, whatever,” she said, wincing as her head started to hurt.  It was always difficult to have a conversation that one side thought was entirely hypothetical and the other didn’t.  “Maybe it just wanted to give us time to think,” she added thoughtfully.

“Think about what?” her brother asked, brow furrowed.

“About the Fox God, of course,” she replied with a loopy grin.  “I’ll admit that when I first came here I dismissed the possibility of the existence of a ‘Fox God’ without even giving it a second thought.  But I’ve had plenty of time to consider it, so now I can say that I truly believe that there is no Fox God.”

“Good enough for me,” said a voice.

Abigail paused.  The voice sounded as though it could have come from her brother, but she couldn’t tell for sure.  She decided it was better not to ask.

They kept walking, and after a few more minutes the tunnel of gates ended, and after a few more they were out of the forest and back on a city street, and a little bit after that they found themselves back at a train station.

“There we go!” Abigail said happily.  She had collapsed on a bench the moment they arrived.  “I told you we’d get out.”

“Yes, but . . .,” Theodore said.  He was frowning and staring at a map.  “It looks like this station is two whole stops away from where we originally got off.”

There was the faintest hint of laughter inside Abigail’s mind, but she just shook her head to clear it.  “So?  Can we still get home from here?”

“Well, yes, but it’s the wrong station . . .”

Abigail shrugged.  “Good enough for me,” she said.