textfiles/magazines/TWILIGHTWORLD/twilight.world-3.4

= TWILIGHT WORLD - Volume 3 Issue 4 (July 22nd 1995) ========================
 (On the birthday of Jason Becker, guitar talent extraordinaire bereft of his 
talents by a muscle-crippling disease)


 You  can do anything with this magazine as long as it  remains  intact.  All 
stories  in  it  are fiction.  No actual persons are designated  by  name  or 
character and similarity is coincidental.
 This magazine is for free. Get it as cheaply as possible!
 Please refer to the end of this file for further information.


= LIST OF CONTENTS ==========================================================


 EDITORIAL
 by Richard Karsmakers

 CRONOS IN WONDERLAND
 by Richard Karsmakers


= EDITORIAL =================================================================
 by Richard Karsmakers


 On  the birthday of Jason Becker,  to whom this issue is dedicated with  all 
the  best hope in the world,  is released "Twilight World" Volume 3 Issue  3, 
the 13th issue in total so far.
 The  reason  why I started "Twilight World" back in April 1993  was  that  I 
wanted to release some of my own stories that I had written in 1992 and 1993, 
stories  that  I  was  myself sortof pleased  with.  Because  they  had  some 
references to earlier Cronos Warchild material,  I thought it proper to first 
do all other Cronos Warchild stories (1988-1992). Well, the last of those was 
released in the previous issue,  so as of this issue the magazine should be a 
bit better (at least *I* think it's a bit better now). So this issue has only 
one entry:  A rather large story called "Cronos' rather zarjaz Adventures  in 
Wonderland",  the first (and longest) of a few long-ish ones I've written  so 
far.
 As  usual,  I hope you'll like reading it.  If you're a  publisher's  talent 
scout,  er,  have  I  already  told  you you're  wearing  a  rather  splendid 
tie/dress?
 So spread the word, and the file, and have fun reading!


 Richard Karsmakers
 (Editor)

P.S.     If  you  no  longer  want  to  receive  "Twilight  World",  *please* 
         unsubscribe;  don't let me wait for the messages to bounce  instead, 
         totally  flooding my email box!  This especially goes for people  on 
         AOL, about 1 out of every 5 direct subscribers.


= CRONOS' RATHER ZARJAZ ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND ============================
 by Richard Karsmakers

 The Lewis Carroll inspiration is a bit blatant, of course, but it's really a 
tribute to this man and his awesome imagination.  Acquaintance with both  the 
original  "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and the earlier Cronos  Warchild 
stories might not be a prerequisitite, but is advised nonetheless.
 The whole has had some Monty Python,  Bill'n'Ted's,  Noam  Chomsky,  Douglas 
Adams, Urbanus and Terry Pratchett influences thrown in for good accord.


                        I - DOWN THE KANGAROO CAVITY

 Cronos was beginning to get very tired of sitting by a bozo on the bank, and 
of  having nothing to do;  once or twice he had glanced at the newspaper  the 
bum used to wrap a bottle of liquor in,  but the pictures were faded and  the 
text was written in a language that didn't make any sense to him.
 So  he  was considering in his own mind (as well as he  could,  for  he  was 
getting  slightly  sleepy  and  his  mind  wasn't  particularly  famous   for 
considering things) whether the pleasure of killing the drunk with one of his 
recently  acquired killer gadgets was worth the trouble of taking  the  thing 
out  of his pocket in the first place when rather suddenly a  White  Kangaroo 
with pink eyes ran close by him.
 Cronos  wasn't  particularly surprised of the fact that it ran so  close  by 
him, nor of hearing the Kangaroo say to itself, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be 
too  late!"  It  hopped by him at  rather  astounding  speed,  then  stopped. 
Panting,  its chest heaving and dropping faster than it should, it fumbled in 
its  pouch  and retrieved from it a pocket watch that had a piece  of  broken 
chain attached to it.  Now Cronos was getting surprised,  gradually - he  had 
never  seen a Kangaroo that could speak,  nor one that seemed to be  able  to 
check  the  time  on a pocket watch he had never seen  any  Kangaroo  walking 
around with before.  Actually, he had never seen a Kangaroo in all his life - 
but that's trivial.
 Before  Warchild  managed to get to his feet,  the  Kangaroo  had  continued 
running in the approximate direction it had been moving before. Then, without 
much ado, it disappeared in a hole beneath a tree.
 Cronos  followed the track,  surprised at the fact that such a large  animal 
seemed to have disappeared in such a small hole.  Even though he himself  was 
even  bigger than the Kangaroo,  his mind got the absurd idea to  follow  the 
animal into the hole - which was evidently even much smaller to him. Our dear 
mercenary  annex  hired gun,  however,  had never been one  of  high  reknown 
throughout  the  universe because of his intelligence - therefore  he  wasn't 
even  surprised  when he found himself managing to get through the  hole  and 
into a tunnel that dipped downward rather all of a sudden.
 He fell for a long time - a time that seemed long enough even for Cronos  to 
be able to calculate the square root of 2456.23.  He rotated and bumped,  got 
tossed around by branches that stuck out, got nauseated by the smell of earth 
and the crawling creatures that probably lived in it.  He closed his eyes  to 
the  overkill of his senses and for a moment he thought he saw  the  Kangaroo 
again.  It changed into a pink ant.  For a brief instant of time there was  a 
smell of honey.  He continued to fall. He was beginning to wonder if he'd end 
up  on the other side of the world - Australia perhaps,  or Norway or Cuba  - 
when thump!  thump!  down he came upon a giant heap of sticks and dry  leaves 
and the fall was over.
 Already Cronos had quite forgotten what had happened.  He looked around him, 
dazed  and confused,  finding himself at the beginning,  or end,  of  a  long 
passage at the other end of which,  just where it started to fade away in the 
distance,  he saw the White Kangaroo hopping off. Engaging his highly trained 
mercenary muscles,  he dashed after the marsupial (only he didn't quite  know 
he was chasing a marsupial,  of course).  He was getting close enough to hear 
it  say,  "Oh my ears and pouch,  how late it's getting",  when  it  suddenly 
turned  a  corner that seemed as if it hadn't been  there  before.  He  could 
already  smell it,  virtually touch its tail when it had turned  around  that 
corner. However, when he turned the corner himself the Kangaroo was no longer 
to be seen.
 He  cursed a long sequence of miscellaneous words he guessed held some  rude 
meaning,  then started wondering about the place he was in.  It was a hall of 
considerable height.  As a matter of fact he could not see the ceiling - only 
the lamps that hung down from it.
 When he looked around him,  all he could see were walls with doors in  them. 
He checked the doors instinctively, probing them for the likelihood of hiding 
trained assassins that might leap at him during a careless  microsecond.  All 
of them were locked,  however. Peeping through the lock holes, he saw nothing 
but a rather intense sort of blackness that made him feel giddy for a while - 
the  kind  of blackness that is so black it seems to carry  with  it  endless 
depth and infinite time.
 How  was he to get out of this wretched place?  The doors all seemed  fairly 
solid - his razor-sharp killer finger nail was no match for them for certain. 
He  tried his American Express credit card but it didn't quite work out  like 
he had seen so often in films.  It just got stuck,  and when he pulled it out 
it looked as if it had just been shredded by a destructive money  machine.  A 
weird sense of claustrophobia struck him.  He looked around in what he  would 
never  admit  was  a desperate way (but which  was  nonetheless).  He  walked 
around, at a loss of what to do.
 He suddenly stumbled across a small three-legged table of solid glass  which 
seemed  to have appeared out of nowhere.  It puzzled him for a while -  where 
had  it  come  from?  His mind ceased puzzling  within  several  nanoseconds, 
however,  in the same way it stopped puzzling soon after discovering,  say, a 
traffic cop after having driven through a red light with a corpse attached to 
the exhaust pipe.
 There was a tiny golden key located on the glass table.

 It didn't take long for Cronos to put one and one (or,  rather,  a key and a 
lot  of  locks)  together.   He  snatched  the  key  off  the  table   rather 
unceremoniously and went around the hall,  trying to see whether it would fit 
in any of the locks.  The locks were too large or,  he reckoned,  the key was 
too small.  He felt in his pockets but there was nothing in them except for a 
mostly  empty bag of sticky liquorice and a killer gadget of the  Telector-O-
Cute! variety.  His lack of resources and the sheer magnitude of this problem 
baffled him for a while,  at the end of which he discovered a curtain. Behind 
it  he  discovered a tiny door;  he had to stoop to try and  fit  the  little 
golden key in its minute lock,  but to his great satisfaction it fitted.  The 
wee door swooped open on its miniature hinges with as little sound as an  ant 
burping.
 Behind  it he saw a beautiful garden.  Cronos had never really been fond  of 
gardens  at all - he had never felt any warmth towards flowers,  and  he  had 
usually  found  trees useful only to stop your car against  when  the  brakes 
failed.  A continuous flow of gardening programmes on English television  had 
once even convinced him to move to a country where you couldn't receive  BBC. 
But in this particular case the garden meant a place to go,  freedom, the end 
of  this  strange claustrophobic sensation that seemed to be gnawing  at  his 
innards.
 Of course there was the problem of size.  He would never be able to get  in. 
He tried his foot,  but no way.  He went back to the glass table, hoping that 
it  might  offer  something  to help him  out  of  this  slightly  precarious 
situation. He hated being able to smell something but not quite being capable 
of  laying  his hands on it.  There was still no way of getting out  of  this 
eerie hall.  He had to get out.  Through that little door (which, by the way, 
had closed and locked itself rather mysteriously and meticulously when he had 
turned his back on it).
 On the table he now discovered a pill. He looked at it conspicuously lest it 
should be a poison of sorts. His mother, Adnarim the Beautiful who was at the 
moment  22 million light years away from him,  had always warned him  against 
strangers  offering  him ice cream and against the eating  of  substances  of 
which he did not know the origin.  But,  he guessed,  any pill which had  the 
phrase  "EAT  ME"  printed  on it could not possibly be  deadly  -  and  this 
particular pill,  remarkably,  had these precise words written on it.  He put 
the gold key down on the table, took the pill and tossed it in his mouth with 
the aim of an inebriated retard in a public urinoir.  Miraculously,  however, 
it  landed  on his tongue - as if proudly defying all laws of  causality  and 
faculty.
 If anything, the pill initially tasted slightly of ink. Within half a second 
after his powerful molars ground the thing to smithereens, however, the taste 
became  one  of  tobacco icecream mixed with decayed  gelding's  gall  -  not 
altogether disagreeable,  Cronos concluded with some relief.  After  all,  it 
might have been raspberry.

 The  hall seemed to become gradually larger.  The lamps which hung from  the 
ceiling removed themselves from him so it seemed. The doors around him became 
bigger.  It made him think of being locked up in the middle of a mountain  in 
an absurdly small room with all exits jammed by rockfalls and a ceiling  full 
of  shiny  stainless  steel spikes coming down slowly - only  the  other  way 
around,  in a bigger room and without any of the pointed  hardware.  Warchild 
noticed the table growing bigger,  too. As a matter of fact, the entire world 
seemed  to increase its size for some reason or another.  He began  sweating. 
What if his enemies had grown, too? What if he could no longer carry with him 
even his tiniest of killer gadgets because they had outgrown him?
 Suddenly  everything froze in mid-growth.  By now Cronos  reckoned,  to  his 
considerable discomfort, that the world had at least multiplied its size by a 
factor  of  ten.  He  glanced around across the  almost  endless  stretch  of 
enormous tiles all around him.  In one direction,  however,  he discovered  a 
door that seemed accurately built for his size - the door that had previously 
been too small, the door that had had the garden behind it.
 He looked up, through the transparent table top above him, way out of reach. 
On it lay a golden key.
 A commonly used pseudonym for the action of human multiplication passed  his 
lips.

 There  was  no  way to get up there.  The legs of  the  table  were  smooth, 
insurmountable.  He had no rope and no glue. His American Express credit card 
had been shredded. He might as well give up.
 Even  though the place where he was now stuck was about ten times as big  as 
it had been previously,  even though he could barely see the far ends of  it, 
he  still  found  an odd sensation biting relentlessly  at  his  stomach.  He 
remembered,  rather vividly,  a girl whom he had seen but briefly and whom he 
would rather never in his life see again.  Painful memories struck.  His  ego 
cowered,  his  arm  felt a stab of agony that  accompanied  the  memory.  The 
feeling  in  his abdomen had been the same.  His desolate sense of  loss  and 
despair likewise.
 He glanced up again. The key lay there, its gold catching rays of light that 
seemed  to  come  from  nowhere,   hurling  them  at  his  eyes   enticingly, 
enchantingly, luring him. But there was no way he could reach it. He couldn't 
climb the table.  He could do nothing about it except for using a suppository 
that lay at his feet, having appeared as if out of thin air. It had "SHOVE ME 
UP  YOUR ANAL MUSCLE" written on it in extremely small  letters.  Its  sudden 
apparation did not even leave him in the usual state of perplexity,  not even 
for the fragment of time known as a nanosecond.
 As  his  mother  had never warned him about  the  possibility  of  poisonous 
suppositories he rather unceremoniously pulled down his pants and shoved  the 
small object where it apparently wanted to be shoved.
 If  his  rectum would have had taste buds,  damn it,  it would  have  tasted 
Brussels sprouts.

                             II - A SEA OF SWEAT

 "Unusual  and  unusualer!" Cronos said to himself.  He quite forgot  how  to 
speak his mother tongue properly when he discovered his head removing  itself 
from his torso as if his neck was a telescope extending itself.  It would  be 
fair  to  say that today was another record day in the  field  of  bafflement 
intensity,  for  it  could certainly be claimed that he had never  been  this 
flummoxed before.  The mercenary annex hired gun had experienced things  with 
which  his  brain couldn't cope more often than any rational  number  in  the 
known universe, but never before had it had such unheralded intensity. Had it 
not been for his entire brain being fully occupied with getting to grips with 
whatever was happening to him, it would certainly have instructed him to drop 
into a coma out of which not even Penelope Sunflower's ghost would have  been 
able to awake him.
 Time passed. It even tipped its hat politely.
 When  Warchild got his wits together,  which he didn't have that many so  he 
succeeded  rather more quickly than might otherwise have been  the  case,  he 
snatched the tiny golden key off the three-legged glass table and dashed  for 
the minute door.  The lamps were beginning to get in the way;  by the time he 
reached the tiny door he probably couldn't even stick his big toe in it.
 A sense of defeat swept over him like a tidal wave.  Fate seemed not to want 
him  out  of  this  hall - which had in the mean  time  shrunk  back  to  the 
proportions  it had when Cronos first entered it.  Possibly even  smaller.  A 
familiar  feeling  frayed his stomach.  He  started  sweating  profusely.  It 
dripped down in his eyes,  it made his sideburns cling to his square head, it 
wet  his  pants,  it  soaked his socks,  it even started to  make  the  tiles 
slippery.
 Out of nothing he suddenly heard large feet,  or paws, slapping on the tiles 
and  coming towards him.  It was the White Kangaroo he had seen  before,  the 
White  Kangaroo that was the fault of all this.  He heard the animal's  voice 
coming closer,  saying,  "The Mayor, the Mayor, won't he be cross when I keep 
him waiting!" It sounded quite as if it was in a hurry,  almost on the  verge 
of panic in fact.
 When  the marsupial was sufficiently close,  Cronos cleared his  throat  and 
ventured to start a conversation involving blame,  impending doom and a  very 
short life span.
 "Say,  er...Sir,"  he began sortof threateningly,  but the Kangaroo did  not 
heed him.  Instead it dropped a keyring with a tiny Koala attached to it,  as 
well as a magnifying glass - both for no apparent reason other than  gravity. 
It then disappeared without as much as a puff of smoke.  Things were  getting 
to be very strange.  They were getting sufficiently strange,  indeed, to make 
the mercenary annex hired gun lapse in a severe form of identity crisis.
 "Zonk," the tiny Koala said.
 "Who  am I?" Warchild said out loud,  actually starting to talk to  himself, 
"Surely not the man who has an immaculate grip on fate and chance, surely not 
the  Great  Warrior  who had yet to be bested?" He  cringed  as  he  suddenly 
realised the beating he'd gotten when he last thought he was the Greatest  of 
Warriors.  For a second he heard a girl's name repeated in his mind,  the  f-
word.
 "Perhaps I'm Napoleon," he continued,  his voice bouncing off the walls  and 
doors as if he was in an empty hospital corridor painted frating green,  "Now 
what  would he do in a situation like this?  He'd probably stick his hand  in 
his uniform - which I don't, so therefore I am not him."
 Cronos smiled. He might not be himself, but at least he wasn't Napoleon.
 "Maybe I'm Al 'Bumkisser' Darcy,  with whom I went to Mercenary Academy," he 
proceeded,  his voice now echoing through the hall as if it was a  candle-lit 
tomb at midnight,  "He'd probably hide under the nearest tile - which I don't 
so therefore I couldn't be him, either."
 He sighed with relief,  thoroughly glad he wasn't Al.  Everything was better 
than Al, even being Korik St...
 Cronos nearly choked on his breath.
 "Maybe  I'm Korik Starchaser," he muttered,  his voice failing to amount  to 
any  strength and therefore echoing even less than the sound of two  feathers 
colliding in the vacuum of space infinity, "There is no telling what he would 
do, really."
 Warchild thought deeply. It hurt.
 "So if you can't tell what he might do," he concluded,  his voice  gathering 
volume as he progressed,  "then I surely can't be him,  for I know what I  am 
doing now; I'm sweating and feeling thoroughly discomfited!"
 Relief set in.
 "Besides," he added, "I'm not that much of a wimp."
 A grin appeared on his face, widening, triumphant.
 "Zonk," sighed the Koala.
 But  why  was everything so strange nonetheless?  He was fairly  certain  of 
being  himself  by now,  if only because of the fact that you'd  have  to  be 
called  Cronos Warchild to get in these sort of situations.  He decided  he'd 
recite the song lyrics of Napalm Death's "Dead",  but somehow the word didn't 
come out like it should:

 "Wednesday!"

 Maybe  he was Korik after all.  Or worse - Al.  He began to sweat  fervently 
again.  Things  were definitely strange and altogether not like he  preferred 
them to be.  He felt disoriented and nauseated by the circumstances he  found 
himself in.
 Also,   there  was  something  very  odd  happening  to  him  -  or  to  his 
surroundings.
 At  a rapid speed,  he found his head removing itself downward from  between 
the lamps hanging from the ceiling.  The doors grew, the walls moved away. He 
was  surprised  to see that,  somewhere during his identity  crisis,  he  had 
picked  up  the  White  Kangaroo's  magnifying  glass.   Somehow,  it  caused 
everything all around him to grow - or himself to shrink, he added proudly to 
himself.  By  now  he was merely two feet tall and  still  shrinking.  If  it 
continued like this,  he feared, he might end up like an insignificant little 
dot  at  the  end of an insignificant line in  an  insignificant  mail  order 
clothing company brochure.
 "Zonk," the Koala intoned.
 He threw the magnifying glass away,  instinctively sensing that it might  be 
the cause of all this shrinking,  or growing. Immediately, both shrinking and 
growing stopped.
 During the lucid moment following this event he ran to the little door,  but 
it turned out to be locked again (both mysteriously and rather meticulously). 
Also,  a glance over his shoulder confirmed his worst thought:  The gold  key 
that fitted in the door's lock had found ways of getting on the table  again, 
as if it had much of a will of its own.
 Things would have started to get pretty repetitive if he hadn't dropped into 
an enormous pool of salt water at that time.

 Cronos had had swimming lessons at Mercenary Academy,  of course, but he had 
hopelessly flunked (and sunk). All lower life forms, however, have a built-in 
sense  of  survival.  As  the part of his brain that was  actually  used  was 
smaller than that of a psychopath horsefly, Warchild could be classified as a 
lower  life  form - which allowed him to find  himself  instinctively  doggy-
paddling to keep his head above the water.
 Where  had this sea come from?  The taste of it was not just  salt,  it  was 
something as indescribable as the smell that arises from the armpits of  Miss 
Fragilia Franatica,  the second Princess of the Zantogian Empire, just before 
they  get  their  annual washing.  He guessed it must be  the  sweat  he  had 
excreted when he was still tall, before he had somehow managed to pick up the 
White Kangaroo's magnifying glass.
 He was quite right.
 Warchild  looked around when he heard a sound of splashing  and  spluttering 
homing in on him.  At first he didn't get a good look at whatever it was that 
was with him in the giant puddle. When it came closer, however, he saw it was 
a  Virgin.  He had a way of recognizing them,  you see,  which  was  probably 
caused by the many looting and raping sessions he had embarked on during  one 
of his practical terms at Mercenary Academy.  On top of that, recognition was 
made painfully obvious by the fact that she had long blonde hair,  a look  of 
naive-ish innocence on her face, and no clothes on at all.
 At  first she didn't seem to notice him,  or perhaps she was  just  ignoring 
him. Maybe virgins also had built-in recognition systems where mercenaries or 
other  potential rapists were concerned.  Cronos felt a strange sensation  in 
his  lower  abdomen,  but this time it seemed quite  enjoyable.  Things  were 
looking better now;  fate seemed to be smiling - or at least grinning through 
its teeth.
 "Er...hi," Cronos said.
 The Virgin continued to ignore him. She was good at it.
 Warchild held out his hand for her to take and shake it.  He nearly drowned. 
Now she noticed him, or at least failed at being good at ignoring him.
 "Good day to you," she said,  her haughty voice sounding like frozen icicles 
dropping on stratospheric glaciers.
 "I'm Warchild," he continued,  "Cronos Warchild." He plastered a smug  smile 
on his face that totally failed to bewilder her.  When he got no  perceptible 
reaction from the Virgin, he added, "I'm a mercenary, you know."
 "Pray,  don't!"  the Virgin cried in a frightened voice that seemed to  come 
from  a strangled throat,  after which she practically leaped from the  water 
and dashed off, frenetically swimming away from the source of her distress.
 "But  I'm  sortof  of  a nice mercenary,"  Cronos  said,  his  voice  almost 
faltering,  as  if  close to being on the verge of crying,  "Don't  you  like 
mercenaries?"
 The Virgin ceased swimming and looked at him, somewhat doubtful. "Don't like 
mercenaries!" she said with a voice like a diamond cutting through the perma-
frozen  body of an ancient mammoth babe,  "Would you like mercenaries if  you 
were me?"
 Cronos thought it over.  He had never looked at it that way.  "No," he  said 
finally, "I guess I wouldn't. But nonetheless I wish I could introduce you to 
some  of my mates from Mercenary College.  You know (he said more to  himself 
than to the Virgin),  some of them got straight A's at all subjects involving 
violence, assassination, raping of virg..."
 He  cut  himself off mid-sentence,  a truly remarkable feat for  someone  as 
overwhelmingly  dim-witted  as himself.  Nonetheless the Virgin  had  already 
heard enough.  The look of distress came in her beautifully blue eyes  again, 
her nails seemed to be poised,  prepared to ward off any infringements of her 
chastity.
 "Beg your pardon there," Cronos said,  blushing,  almost ashamed of himself, 
"We won't talk about mercenaries and...er...indecent assault anymore."
 "We,  indeed!" the Virgin retorted, her voice like an icy avalanche crashing 
down on an igloo, "I've always hated them and...er...it. My mother, too."
 "Do  you  like  murderers,  then?" Cronos  inquired,  "Or  perhaps  building 
contractors?  I  could tell you some great stories about murderers (again  he 
went off more to himself then to anyone else).  There was,  for example, this 
case  of  Fak the Ruthless.  You know he's reported to have  assassinated  at 
least  five dozen people during his practical term,  over half of which  were 
children or women.  He was a guest lecturer at Mercenary College for a  year. 
He  used to be great at looting and raping,  too,  and...  Hey!  Why are  you 
swimming off like that?"
 All of the pool seemed to be in commotion now,  what with the Virgin  trying 
to swim away from Cronos as quickly as possible.
 "Please come back,  Virgin," Cronos cried hoarsely,  almost  pleadingly,  "I 
swear I won't talk of mercenaries or murderers any more.  Not even of rape of 
virgins!"
 When the Virgin heard the pleading sound of Warchild's voice,  she  couldn't 
help  but turn around,  as if she sensed that the mercenary annex  hired  gun 
didn't and couldn't possibly know any better.  She panted as she came closer, 
her complexion rather wan.
 "Let's  get out of this pool," she said,  her voice having lost most of  its 
icy  quality now,  "and I will tell you why I hate mercenaries and  murderers 
and...er...indecent assaulters."
 It was about time they left the pool for,  rather extraordinarily, it seemed 
to have filled up with other animals. There was a large Ant, a Kaka, a Falcon 
and a rather large Koala.  Cronos, his instincts momentarily taking over, led 
the way and dog-paddled to the shore.
 "Zonk," the Koala uttered, as matter-of-fact as it could.

        III - A SILLY RACE, A VIRGIN AND A TAIL (AND A TALE AS WELL)

 After  Cronos and the various other creatures had reached the shore  of  the 
giant puddle,  he looked around at them.  Feathers were clung to bodies, furs 
looked rather disfunctional, water gleamed off a chitinous skeleton.
 "Now  how will we get dry?" the Virgin asked slightly irritated,  her  voice 
like icy stalactites in a period of dew, "And how will I get my hair in order 
again?  I  spent  a fortune on it at the hairdresser's  only  yesterday,  you 
know!"
 One  of the animals,  within the confines of its  bill,  muttered  something 
about not knowing and not wanting to know at all.  The Virgin looked  around, 
her gaze as cold as frostbitten toes in an Antarctican mid-winter night,  but 
wisely decided not to react.
 "Zonk," the Koala thought aloud.
 There  was  a  brief silence,  fragile like capillary  glass  tubes  and  as 
vigorous as a Pitbull grinding baby skulls.
 "I  know how to get dry before we all catch some rabid kind  of  pneumonia," 
the Falcon said,  stepping forward, "I shall tell a story. The driest thing I 
can come up with. Promise."
 It had expected some visual support from the others, but none such happened. 
It cleared his throat and stroked its pointed beak,  as if thinking of how to 
start.
 "Once  upon  a time there was a Princess," it began,  eyeing the  Virgin  to 
gauge her reaction,  "who was very beautiful indeed. Her father, a grumpy old 
man,  wanted  her  to marry an Evil Prince called Elvis who was  also  rather 
frightfully fat and ultra ugly. Her mother felt sorry for her, of course, but 
they  just happened to live in a kingdom where women's lib and that  sort  of 
thing hadn't happened yet."
 "Zonk," the Koala interrupted.
 The Falcon cast a menacing glance at the fluffy creature.
 "Zonk," it apologized.
 "On  the  night of her having to wed," the Falcon continued,  "she  was  all 
dressed  up  in the most gorgeous gown that made all of  the  castle  maidens 
jealous.  She also wore little glass shoes that fitted her tiny feet exactly, 
and  slightly  above her upper lip sat the Mother of all  Moles.  Her  mother 
wept, and her father drank another beer. She thought it was altogether rather 
silly  that  she had to marry this prince whom she did  not  even  love.  She 
shuddered  at  the  thought of perhaps one day having to darn  his  socks  or 
something  as  mundane  as that.  Now the stable boy  was  something  totally 
different. He was a broad-shouldered hunk with a hugely bulging..."
 "Atchooo!"  the  Koala interrupted  rather  brusquely,  therewith  instantly 
causing the Wrath of the Falcon to be turned upon him.
 "Our fluffy colleague here is right," the Kaka now interjected,  "We're  not 
getting any drier at all. I propose we do something else. Maybe we had better 
get physical."
 "Zonk," the Koala sniffed in agreement.
 The Falcon,  though its pride was hurt somewhat,  could do nothing else  but 
condescend,  too.  "I've been meaning to ask you, by the way. What's a 'Kaka' 
and why do you look like the spitting image of a 'Dodo'?"
 "Elementary,  my dear Falcon," the Kaka replied,  "I am a Kaka but one of my 
kin  has  once been mistaken for a Dodo.  Basically a Kaka is like a  Dodo  - 
only, well, different."
 The Falcon pondered it over for a while.  It decided to ask no  further.  It 
was having troubles with it, but in the end it succeeded.
 "Let's run around in approximate circles like a bunch of mental retards  and 
see  who wins," the Kaka decided when it was obvious no more  questions  were 
going to be asked.
 "Zonk," the Koala nodded, and everybody agreed.
 They  all  ran around for about half an hour.  Sometimes the  Falcon  seemed 
fastest,  but occasionally the large Ant overtook it in a flurry of legs  and 
the scent of honey.  The Koala seemed to tag along,  as did the Kaka.  Cronos 
ran  to  keep up with the Falcon or the Ant,  whichever was  fastest  at  the 
moment.  The  Virgin tried hard to keep up with Cronos,  whom she  considered 
mentally and physically inferior to herself. Women's lib in the making.
 Somehow,  they actually seemed to get dry in the process.  At the end of it, 
Kaka rather unexpectedly signalled them all to stop.
 "Who's  won?"  the Virgin asked,  her panting sounding like  snow  stars  on 
frozen windows.
 "Everybody  has won," the Kaka said resolutely,  "there's no question  about 
it."
 There were some muted cheers.
 "And,"  the Kaka added with emphasis,  "of course,  all of you shall  get  a 
prize!"
 "Zonk," the Koala now cheered with the others.
 "Excuse me," Cronos interposed after this bout of happiness,  "but who is to 
give the prizes?"
 "Well, you of course," the Kaka cried happily, "who else?"
 All of a sudden all creatures' faces swirled to meet his, eyebrows raised in 
eager expectation.
 "Indeed, who else?" the Falcon interjected.
 "Sure.  Who else but he?" the enormous Ant now added, its multi-faceted eyes 
rolling.
 "There's no question about it,  really," the Virgin agreed,  her voice  like 
icecream in a hot summer day, "Or is there?"
 "Zonk?" the Koala enthused.
 "Prizes! Prizes!" they now all yelled rather too fervently.
 Cronos  fingered  his  pockets.  Out  came  the  most-empty  bag  of  sticky 
liquorice.  He handed them to the Kaka,  which he reckoned was the Master  of 
the Award Ceremony.  The identical twin of a Dodo pried them loose and handed 
them around.  Just before Cronos was to supposed to get his  prize,  however, 
the  pieces of liquorice that were left disappeared with a deft  movement  of 
the Kaka's feathered hand - filed away for reappearance, no doubt, at a later 
and probably more private occasion.
 "What else have you in your pocket?" the bird inquired.
 Cronos hesitated,  but eventually took out his Elector-O-Cute killer gadget. 
Especially  the Falcon and the Kaka looked at the gleaming piece  of  hi-tech 
metalware with more than the usual interest.
 "What's  it?"  the  Ant asked,  its  multi-faceted  eyes  looking  intensely 
scrutinous at the mercenary annex gun and about a hundred other places within 
the wide vicinity.
 "It's  a thing with which I can electrocute people over the  phone,"  Cronos 
explained,  "It's  pretty ingenious,  you know,  and it works regardless  the 
distance. Moreover, you can..."
 "Zonk!" the Koala cried. It seemed to go frantic, its tail curling in an odd 
way  and  its entire body shaking much in the way a  doomed  little  friendly 
Gremlin shakes just prior to colliding with huge quantities of water that  it 
sees inescapably running towards him.
 "Sounds  much too savage," the Kaka said,  eyeing Warchild  with  suspicious 
distrust,  "for  having  someone like yourself walking around  with  it."  It 
inserted  a meaningful,  contemplative pause.  "Nonetheless," it said  as  it 
snatched it from Cronos' hands with a fell swoop,  "I shall give it to you as 
your prize."
 Cronos was about to get very angry but his poor brain instructed him not  to 
bother. Which was probably just as well.
 "Anyway," the Virgin said,  her voice filled with the weight and purpose  of 
an  ice  floe  that  knows it has to fill the  biggest  river  in  the  known 
universe,  "I shall now tell you all the tale,  the sad tale,  of why I  hate 
mercenaries."
 She cast a meaningful glance at Warchild. It was lost to him, however, as he 
was examining his Elector-O-Cute! killer gadget to see if the Kaka might have 
damaged it. He put it in his pocket after assuring himself that no corruption 
had been inflicted on the thing.  He made a mental note not to forget testing 
the device once he'd get home.  You never knew, and it was the only way to be 
sure.
 Warchild  found it odd to hear the Virgin speaking of a sad tail whereas  A) 
It was no sad tail,  and B) She had no tail.  He was fairly convinced of  the 
latter,  for when viewing her naked splendidness earlier that day he was sure 
he had not found evidence of a tail's presence,  and he reckoned there surely 
was no place to hide it.
 Nevertheless the Virgin told her tale.  Perhaps it should have been called a 
poem,  but that would have made this whole bit of the story too difficult  to 
write.  Cronos was half wondering about the tail, half listening to her voice 
like snowflakes dropping in the sea, so to him the tale ran like this:

                        "Once upon a time there
                        was a virgin and a
                       mercenary too.
                      The virgin, of
                     course, was I.
                      They went along
                       rather fabulously
                         but nonetheless
                           something seemed
                             to gnaw at the
                               mercenary's
                              insides. Of
                             course she
                            couldn't
                           know that
                            it was one
                              of his most
                               base instincts
                                 speaking up that
                                   spoke of rape,
                                     sex and a lot
                                    of slaughter.
                                  She only
                                just
                            escaped
                          but
                           she
                            still
                              hears
                                his
                              voice
                             now
                              and
                            then
                            .
                         "

 When the Virgin stopped her tale she caught Cronos deep in  thought,  almost 
as if in a trance.  To tell the truth,  he had actually found it necessary to 
go into a state not unlike hibernation - for otherwise his brain would surely 
not even start to understand what this tail was all about. Besides, he seemed 
to have lost count of the bends.  Had there been one one one one one one?  Or 
perhaps one more?
 "You see?" the Virgin said to the others while deliberately ignoring Cronos, 
her  voice  like the sound of a blunt icepick attempting to cut  through  the 
North Pole, "Virgins and mercenaries just don't rhyme."
 Cronos pondered on, unperturbed, thinking about ones - too many of them.
 "Hey,  dude!" the Virgin said rather well audibly to get Cronos'  attention, 
sounding  like  the Titanic on the night of April 14th  1912.  The  mercenary 
annex hired gun had apparently come to the end of his comatose pondering  and 
chose that moment to look up.
 "Seven!" he cried, smiling rather triumphantly.
 The Virgin said something like,  "Ooof!", which sounded like a thousand tons 
of liquid nitrogen being hurled in the mouth of an erupting volcano.  She ran 
off, all but stampeding.
 "Come  on,  girl,"  Cronos  said,  like  a  mother  addressing  her  spoiled 
offspring, "What's all this running away for?"
 The Virgin didn't answer.  Her splendidly nude form ran off in the distance, 
like a dog with its tail between its legs - only,  of course, she didn't have 
one. Cronos was still fairly certain about that.
 "Hmpf," he snorted, "Fak the Ruthless wouldn't have had any problems getting 
her back."
 "Zonk!" the Koala sniggered. With a small >plop< it disappeared.
 "Er...hum," the Kaka said,  "I think I left the gas on at home." With  those 
words he disappeared through a door that locked itself behind him.
 The  Falcon flapped its wings and heaved itself in the sky.  "I'd better  be 
going too,  pal," he said,  "good luck to you." Within seconds it was a  dark 
spot growing even smaller, far away.
 Leaving behind a vague scent of honey, the Ant had disappeared, too.
 So Cronos was alone again. Alone with himself in this truly vast hall filled 
with  doors he couldn't open - except for one,  to which the key lay  out  of 
reach, on a three-legged table that was too high for him to ascend.
 "I  wish I hadn't mentioned Fak," Cronos muttered sortof sadly  to  himself, 
"Will I ever see Fak again,  or any of my other Mercenary Academy mates? Will 
I ever get out of here?"
 The  feeling  in  his  lower abdominal  area  moved  slightly  up.  It  also 
transformed  from  a rather nice to a somewhat nauseous  one.  Sweat  started 
breaking out from one or two pores, followed by more.
 Then he suddenly heard the sound of feet flapping, coming closer. Was it the 
Virgin that came back to throw herself in his unmistakably masculine arms, to 
hurl her regretful tears at his recognizably macho shoulder?

                          IV - TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY

 Of course,  Cronos Warchild was quite wrong (rather totally and  exceedingly 
so,  as a matter of fact).  It wasn't the Virgin but the White Kangaroo - the 
creature  that had been the cause of his current predicament.  When  it  came 
within speaking range,  he heard it cry, "Oh the Mayor! The Mayor! He'll make 
a eunuch of me if he discovers I've lost them!"
 At that moment the White Kangaroo saw Cronos standing.
 "Mortimer," the White Kangaroo said in a reproachful tone while pointing  to 
a place behind the mercenary annex hired gun,  "what are you doing  here?  Go 
into  the  house and fetch me my magnifying glass and the  keyring  with  the 
Koala on it. This minute!"
 Intimidated  and somewhat abashed,  Cronos walked off in the  direction  the 
White  Kangaroo  had pointed to.  Obviously the animal had mistaken  him  for 
somebody else,  but Warchild decided not to behead it for this mistake; if he 
would have killed every creature that was doing something odd today he  would 
end up with a frighteningly huge pile of carrion at his feet.  It would  take 
days  to rid his hands of the stench of rotting flesh,  though - he  relished 
the thought.
 Was that a telepathic vulture, circling high above him?
 After  a  brief  stroll  through green meadows  with  flowers  blooming  and 
butterflies making love in the air, he came upon a small cottage with a rusty 
copper plaque next to the door.  "W.  KANGAROO" was engraved on it in  rococo 
style, barely readable to cultural barbarians like himself.
 He  walked inside and hurried up the wooden stairs when he heard  the  slow, 
deliberate footsteps of what he guessed was the real Mortimer.  At the end of 
the  stairs he discovered a little room,  of which he closed the door  behind 
him.  The room was well kept - that is,  if you just tried hard to think away 
the  piles of computer printouts,  floppy disks and miscellaneous notes  that 
lay  everywhere.  On a table that was relatively void of  the  aforementioned 
items lay a magnifying glass and the keyring with the Koala attached to it.
 "Zonk," the Koala sighed.
 He  wanted  to grab these items to give them back to the  White  Kangaroo  - 
although it eluded him why he would want to do the dratted creature a favour. 
He  didn't get around to actually taking the magnifying glass off the  table, 
nor  the  keyring  with  the Koala on it,  for  at  that  precise  instant  a 
hypodermic syringe materialised next to them.
 For a second or two there was a smell of ozone as if just after lightning.
 A  label was attached to the syringe.  It had the typed words "CYANIDE"  and 
"MEDICATE AT YOUR OWN PERIL" crossed out,  and "INJECT ME" hand-written below 
them.
 "Whattaheck," Cronos thought to himself, "it doesn't seem deadly to me."
 He stuck the needle in his left arm and injected the fluid in a vein,  or at 
least not too far away from one.
 His arm turned purple,  then cyan.  Then his whole body went bright red with 
yellow dots,  then,  too, all cyan. The entire process, during which Warchild 
saw  all  kinds  of strange colours swirl towards  him,  lasted  perhaps  ten 
seconds. At the end of it he felt like his old self again - only much bigger. 
He  found his head pressed against the ceiling,  almost causing his  neck  to 
break.  Previously,  the sensation of claustrophobia has been rather dreadful 
but nonetheless subtle-ish;  now, however, it struck him like a freight train 
transporting  lead  storming  towards  him,  down-hill,  with  malfunctioning 
brakes.
 And still he continued growing. There was no other solution but to stick his 
head out of the window and his left foot up the chimney.
 Sweat starting breaking out of him again,  running down the various parts of 
his body in small rivulets;  what about the cheap motel room he rented at the 
moment, cockroach-ridden though it may be? He'd never fit in it - if he could 
get  out  of here at all in the first place.  And where was he to  leave  the 
large  trunk  carrying his collection of patented  and  superlatively  lethal 
killer gadgets?
 He was torn from his thoughts when he heard feet flapping up the stairs, and 
a voice yelling,  "Mortimer!  I need my magnifying glass right now, you hear? 
Mortimer!"
 Next thing he knew,  the White Kangaroo opened the door to the little room - 
or  at least the animal tried to but didn't actually succeed as the door  had 
to  open  to  the inside and Cronos' posterior  was  rather  solidly  pressed 
against it.
 "Then I'll try to get in through the window," Cronos heard the animal say to 
itself.
 Outside,  the White Kangaroo got quite a fright when it saw the huge, square 
head with the sideburns sticking out one side of its home.
 "Mortimer!" it called angrily, "Mortimer!"
 Slow,  deliberate  steps  up  the gravel of the garden  path  announced  the 
butler.  It  was  a badger wearing a black uniform,  that had a  white  towel 
folded around his arm which it held in front of itself.
 "Can I be of any service, Sir?" the butler inquired politely.
 "What's  that?" the Kangaroo spat with badly hidden  vehemence,  "Would  you 
mind telling me what that is?"
 The badger looked up at Cronos' head.
 "Shocking,  Sir,"  it admitted,  "It seems to be a rather frightfully  large 
head belonging to some sort of giant-ish chap, with your permission, Sir."
 "Get rid of it!" the Kangaroo commanded urgently,  as if it concerned merely 
a couple of gnats in the bedroom.
 Although Cronos resented the possibility of his huge,  rather squarely built 
shape  to  be manhandled out of the room by the tiny White Kangaroo  and  its 
midget  butler,  he  began  to  think it would  be  the  only  way  out.  The 
claustrophobic  freight train had hit him between the eyes - it  hadn't  even 
lost any velocity,  the driver hand't seen him, and the "no speed limit" sign 
was coming up around the bend.
 His  left  foot deemed the moment fit to send to his brain the signal  of  a 
rather  irritating itch he had no way of being able to scratch.  He  bit  his 
tongue.
 Voices  reached him,  barely audible,  parts of sentences,  as if they  were 
conspiring against him.  He also heard a third voice, that he saw belonged to 
what appeared to be a Skunk of sorts that was called Ted.
 "What?!" he heard the Skunk exclaim, high-pitched with fright, "Do I have to 
go down the chimney?"
 "Well, most certainly, Sir," the butler confirmed.
 "But  I don't want to,  you see," the Skunk whimpered,  "Why does it  always 
have to be me?"
 Cronos saw the White Kangaroo snorting impatiently, flapping its feet on the 
grass.
 "I'm  afraid,  Sir,"  the  butler tried to  explain,  "that  I  can't  offer 
satisfactory answers to either of your questions,  Sir. However, if you allow 
me,  Sir,  I would advise you to do whatever you have to do quickly so as not 
to incur the wrath of your master, Mr. Kangaroo, Sir."
 "But..." the Skunk whimpered on.
 "I think,  Sir," the butler cut off the Skunk's words,  "that you're at this 
particular  moment in time and space acting like what is reportedly known  by 
commoners as a 'yeller',  Sir.  Now if you'd be so kind,  Sir?" It emphasized 
its  words  by gesturing for the Skunk to move its rear end up the  roof  and 
into the chimney.
 There were some sounds of ladders being climbed, and of Skunk's feet walking 
across the thatched roof.  Cronos pulled back his left leg as far as he could 
manage, back into the chimney somewhat.
 "Hi,"  said  the Skunk in a voice that didn't particularly  flow  over  with 
confidence when it peeped down the chimney.
 A leg extended itself. A boot collided with a black-and-white, rather smelly 
animal  which  as a result was sent hurling through  the  air.  It  connected 
itself to the ground somewhere, some moments later.
 There  were some cries of anger outside.  The unconscious Skunk was  fetched 
from  its  position  on a patch of thistles,  after which  further  parts  of 
conversations were carried by the breeze into Cronos' ears.
 "Mouth  to mouth resuscitation?" the Kangaroo exclaimed,  its  voice  filled 
with disgust, "Are you kidding? Mouth-to-mouth on a blimmin' Skunk?"
 "I  kid thee not,  Sir," the butler replied timidly,  "As a matter of  fact, 
Sir,  this  is the recommended sort of remedy in medical cases such  as  this 
one, if you allow me, Sir."
 Suddenly a couple of clouds broke.
 "A little bit of Plantiac, perhaps?" a voice thundered from the heavens like 
the Gods playing a double bass drum.
 They all startled, Cronos inclusive; it even caused the Skunk to come to, be 
it reluctantly. They looked around but couldn't see anything. They decided to 
ignore the mystery voice, which was never heard in Wonderland henceforth.

 "Terrible!  Terrible!" the Skunk accounted,  "It was simply terrible!  There 
were  fiends  and monsters and flames and...and giants!  I  stood  no  chance 
against  their  superior numbers.  I mean I tried,  mind  you,  but  even  my 
proverbial strength and the smell I can excrete left me at the shortest  end. 
And then there was this huge,  black monstrosity that,  in spite of my heroic 
defence,  catapulted  me out of the room without as much as giving me a  fair 
chance."
 "I see, Sir," the butler nodded, "I see, if you permit me, Sir."
 "Shut your face," the White Kangaroo said, and lapsed into a fit of thought.
 Time  passed.  It looked at the scene incomprehensibly,  then continued  its 
eternal path.
 Cronos, for his part, was quite glad he wasn't growing anymore. Things would 
have  looked  severely disfortunate if he hadn't - possibly even  worse  than 
they looked now.
 In the mean time,  the animals outside seemed to have some sort of idea. The 
butler disappeared. 
 After  a  while  the badger butler came back,  pushing  before  it  a  large 
wheelbarrow filled with a dark brown, semi-solid substance. A peg was located 
on its nose.
 "There you are,  Sir," the butler said, slightly out of breath, "the ma'ure, 
Sir."
 The  White  Kangaroo  looked  up at Warchild's  face,  the  beginning  of  a 
triumphant grin dawning on its face.
 "The smell's awful," the Skunk said, "Simply terrible."
 Before Cronos knew what happened, he was being subjected to a volley of what 
he guessed was human manure.  Most of it missed him,  but some of it clung to 
his hair and some of it made its way inside the room, just smelling awfully.
 "Stop that," he bellowed,  nearly making the house burst at the  seams,  "or 
I'll...I'll  (he  was searching for a foul enough punishment for  these  vile 
creatures) do something I'll regret later."
 Warchild  did  not  get the time to put any of his  threats  into  practise, 
though,  for  at  that moment the manure transformed itself  in  raspberries. 
Raspberries, of all things!
 Cronos might not have been very bright,  but even an imbecile laboratory rat 
would by now have learned that, whenever edible things occurred in the story, 
its  size would change from small or big or big to small (or its  surrounding 
would mutate with the same effect). So, in spite of the fact that raspberries 
to Cronos were just about the worst things to eat - but one - he tossed  some 
of them in his mouth.
 There was a quick feeling of giddiness,  accompanied by a growing of  chairs 
and  tables,  and next thing he knew he was gazing at a printed-out  computer 
program  listing on the floor of which the letters were almost one  third  of 
his height.
 He  dashed  out of the door,  jumped down the stairs,  and ran  towards  the 
forest next to the White Kangaroo's abode with all speed he could muster.  He 
almost  stumbled upon a scene involving the throwing of more manure  and  the 
performing of apparently obscene things to a poor Skunk.
 He guessed this was an appropriate moment to feel some sense of  guilt,  but 
his  extensive  training  at Mercenary Academy had made sure  he  didn't  and 
wouldn't ever.
 The assorted animals that were gathered around the Skunk and the wheelbarrow 
with manure thought for a moment that they noticed Warchild's tiny form  just 
in  time to see a tiny booted foot disappearing in the dense  undergrowth  of 
the forest.  Just like humans,  however,  who for example don't see gnomes as 
they don't believe in them,  the animals thought they'd had a collective fata 
morgana and proceeded throwing excrements at the window.
 "First  I've  got to grow back to my usual size again,"  Cronos  thought  to 
himself when he knew he was safe,  hiding under a fairly large tuft of grass, 
"Then  I've  got to find my way to that garden I saw when I  just  got  here. 
Maybe  some killer weed'll grow there,  or poisonous fungi that may  come  in 
handy in future assignments. Perhaps..."
 A sudden high twittering sound,  repeated two or three times, made an abrupt 
end  to his train of thoughts.  He looked up into two black eyes and a  large 
orange bill that belonged to a yellow,  cutely fluffy chicken.  Incidentally, 
it was also terrifyingly huge.
 "Easy  does it," Cronos tried to coax it,  almost on the verge of  panicing, 
"Issy nice chicken, yes?"
 He had never seen this big a chicken - but, then again, he had never been as 
small as this before.  He tried to think of it as a huge mound of lean  meat, 
but the image didn't work - it kept on making sounds at him, opening its bill 
menacingly,  threatening  to  misinterpret him for a bit of  delicious  fresh 
corn.
 It  was completely uncertain whether the chicken wanted to eat him or if  it 
wanted  to  play with him.  Either way,  it did make an awful racket  and  at 
several  occassions almost flattened the mercenary annex hired gun under  its 
clawed paws. Again, Cronos cursed himself for having opted to bring along the 
Elector-O-Cute  killer  gadget,  which  had by now repeatedly  proven  to  be 
completely useless.
 He was beginning to think he would either not get rid of the chicken or  not 
get out alive,  when in the distance he heard a cock crowing.  If the chicken 
would have had ears, it would have pointed them; it seemed to listen intently 
for  a  few moments,  after which it hopped off to somewhere  far  away  from 
Warchild.
 He sighed in relief.
 "I'd surely like to have caught it and cooked it," he mused,  "If only I had 
been somewhat bigger."
 Even  Cronos knew that one wasn't supposed to go around chasing and  killing 
animals  that  are  about  four times as high as  yourself  when  all  you're 
carrying is a device with which you can kill people by telephone. The problem 
it came down to,  again,  was size.  How was he to grow up to the right  size 
again? He couldn't see any cakes, suppositories, bottles, icecreams or pieces 
of liquorice anywhere. Not even any raspberries! All he could see was a large 
mushroom that didn't seem edible either.
 On top of the mushroom,  however,  sat a small llama - arms and legs  folder 
like only preciously few llamas can do,  sedately smoking a bong.  It  didn't 
seem  to  notice Cronos at all,  nor did it seem to notice the  entire  world 
around it, including the very mushroom on which it sat.

                         V - ADVICE FROM A LLAMAOID

 They looked at each other for a while,  like opponents gauging their enemy's 
strength.  Cronos thought it looked really silly to have a llama sitting on a 
mushroom with its legs and arms folded much in the way he had seen statues of 
fat  men with long earlobes do in Oriental travelling  brochures.  But,  then 
again,  he had seen llamas in much sillier poses shooting camels with  lasers 
and such, now he came to think of it.
 "Chill  out man,  nicely groovy and zany and altogether rather  ozric,"  the 
llama  said suddenly,  almost startling Warchild,  "Zarjaz world we live  in, 
innit? Almost better than 'Star Raiders' on the Atari 8-bit."
 The  mercenary annex hired gun let it sink in for a while.  He was about  to 
produce a reply along the lines of "Sure" or "Indeed" when suddenly the llama 
spoke again.
 "Who might you be, squire?"
 Immediately,  a D.E.A.  (Damaged Ego Alert) sounded in Cronos' head. Had his 
fame,  or notoriousness, not reached this subterranean world? Had the stories 
about his flawless killings,  that had so far spread across all the inhabited 
planets of the known universe like wildfire,  missed out on this  meaningless 
little whatever-it-was?
 Somewhat  hurt  he replied by mentioning his name in the  usual  Bond-James-
Bond-style.
 "That  sounds  like  a  seriously unsound  name  to  me,  chum,"  the  llama 
practically laughed out loud, letting Warchild's name roll over its tongue as 
if sampling cheap wine.
 "It  will  not do,  man," the llama concluded after some  more  rolling  and 
sampling.  "I  will therefore call you 'Jeff'.  Now you have to agree  that's 
much better to start with. Seriously groovy, as a matter of fact."
 Cronos  stared  at the llama,  somewhat amazed at the animal's  capacity  to 
insult  both  him and his parents in one go without as much as  flinching  an 
eye,  nor disconnecting its mouth from the bong.  Somehow, the name 'Jeff' in 
his  mind  connected itself with the image of a bearded chap with  long  hair 
sitting on a stuffed yak, wearing an afghan, smoking a Camel cigarette and in 
his hands holded an empty bottle of Inca Cola. He didn't quite know where the 
image came from but, frankly, he couldn't be bothered.
 "This  world  seems altogether rather strange to me," Cronos said  out  loud 
after accumulating in his mind all the weird things that had happened so  far 
while being underground.
 "You!" the llama retorted,  visibly agitated,  "Paugh!  What makes you think 
you've got something to say around here?"
 Now that was a question that Cronos A) Couldn't reply to, B) Hadn't expected 
and  C) Wondered about what had caused it.  All these factors  together  left 
Cronos in a state that,  should careful evaluation have been necessary, would 
have  had  to  surpass  hibernation - a state that  would  have  been  almost 
unmistakable from, if not identical to, death.
 "May I add, by the way," the animal added as an almost trivial afterthought, 
"that there's a drop of nasal fluid on your upper lip?"
 This, almost literally, was the drop that made the bucket run full. Sniffing 
violently and wiping his nose with his sleeve,  Cronos walked off much in the 
way the Virgin had walked off from him earlier.
 "I say, old fruit," Warchild heard the llama yelling behind him, "come back, 
man! No need for all that running off all of a sudden."
 He turned around and traced his steps back to the animal. He didn't like the 
smugness of its smile.
 "Be excellent to each other," the llama said. Muttering to itself, it added, 
"I've always wanted to say that.  It does have a nice ring to it,  even if  I 
say so myself."
 "Is that all you have to say?" Cronos asked,  "Is that why you wanted me  to 
come back?"
 "Well,  you know,  dude...er...no," the Andes inhabitant said.  It even took 
the bong out of its mouth.  If blew a puff of smoke in Cronos' face that made 
him feel dizzy for a couple of moments,  then said, "So you think things have 
been rather strange to you?"
 "Yes," Warchild nodded,  "I mean I've changed sizes at least one one one one 
one times today.  Animals talk.  You talk.  And you're smoking,  too.  Only a 
while  back  I tried to recite the lyrics to Napalm Death's  "Dead"  and  the 
word,  one word mind you, came out all wrong. I don't know what's happened to 
me. Am I one card short of a full deck? Am I not quite the shilling? Am I not 
the usual top billing? Am I..."
 He  cut himself off,  just short of saying that he thought he was  a  banana 
tree.
 "Am  I slightly mad?" he asked to wrap it up,  genuine concern  filling  his 
voice.
 The  animal  shifted its position on the mushroom,  as if  it  had  suddenly 
discovered that its rear end was sleeping.  It closed its eyes for a  moment, 
which  looked as if it was reading the answer to Cronos' questions  from  the 
insides of its eyelids.
 "Well,"  the llama said after a while of breathless  contemplation,  opening 
its  eyes,  "Perhaps you could recite the lyrics to Metallica's  "Orion"  for 
me."
 Cronos thought hard for a while.  Then he thought hard for another while  or 
two. He then said:

 "If birds could talk
  The world would be quite different
  This is the strange dream
  That birds have at night
  It is no longer possible
  When they're awake
  Cannot man teach them to do so
  Or let them be?"

 "See?"  Cronos  said,  initially sporting some pride at being  able  to  say 
something as profoundly deep and extensive as this,  then disappointed,  "The 
words came out all wrong."
 The llama looked like a psychiatrist who was about the judge a  ten-year-old 
little girl mentally incapacitated for the rest of her life. Its face did not 
so  much frown,  but more sortof contorted.  One of its front paws seemed  to 
stroke its chin in a wholly un-llama-like way.
 "First  of  all,"  the  llama said,  "that  wasn't  "Orion"  for  that's  an 
instrumental song.  Trick question there. You did do "To Live Is To Die", but 
again it seems the words didn't quite come out right.  Incidentally,  did you 
know  that  the  real lyrics to that song were probably  partly  ripped  from 
Stephen Donaldson's 'Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever'?"
 Cronos  failed both to recall ever having heard of the author's name  before 
and  connecting  all of it with the current situation.  He tried  to  express 
naive innocence,  something which unfortunately only caused his mouth to drop 
open and his eyes to stare at no particular point somewhere in the distance.
 "Thought you didn't," the llama said,  more to itself than to Warchild.  The 
silence that followed lasted the better part of five minutes.
 The South-American animal broke the silence first.
 "So what size would you like to be?"
 "Dunno,"  Cronos  said,   not  quite  prepared  to  answer  a  question   as 
intrinsically complicated as that,  "I guess I don't care that much,  really. 
I'd basically like to be able to stay the same size for a while, you know."
 "I don't," the llama said, dryly.
 "What?"
 "I don't," it repeated.
 "Don't what?"
 "Know," replied the llama.
 "Know?"
 "Yes. I don't know."
 The animal rolled its eyes at the human's obvious stupidity.
 "You don't know what?" Cronos insisted.
 "I don't know that you'd basically like to stay the same size for a  while," 
the llama explained more elaborately.
 "You don't?" Warchild asked incredulously.
 "Well, now I do but when you started about it I didn't."
 "Ah. I see," said Cronos, unsure.
 "No, you probably don't," the llama disagreed.
 "I don't what?"
 "See."
 "See what?"
 "This conversation is getting nowhere", the llama broke off.
 Cronos fell silent, already quite having lost trace of it way back.
 "I'd  like  to be slightly bigger than I am now,"  he  said  finally,  "four 
inches is such a darned lousy height to be, or should I say lowth?"
 The llama snorted, standing up on its hind legs, precisely four inches tall. 
"No it isn't," it said, hurt.
 Cronos had another attack of guilt again, but somewhere along the relatively 
infinite  line  of nerves and synapses it got nipped in  the  bud.  His  face 
remained utterly void of expression.
 Another silence followed.  It lay on the ground,  writhing,  pleading, as if 
almost begging to be broken.
 "One  side will get you bigger,  the other will get you smaller," the  llama 
finally said, "You sort it out, Jeff."
 Cronos  hated being called 'Jeff'.  He also wondered of what one side  would 
cause growth and the other shrinking.
 "The mushroom, you git," the animal said, reading his mind.
 "That's  all we need," Cronos thought to  himself,  annoyed,  "A  telepathic 
llama."
 "I  heard that!" the Llama said,  again sounding hurt.  Amid a huge  fractal 
explosion it disappeared off the mushroom,  leaving behind only the scent  of 
burned herbs.
 Now  Warchild  faced a dilemma he had faced the last time during  the  first 
grade at Mercenary Academy:  Mathematics. His tutors had at the time insisted 
he learn basic arithmetic - Cronos had found it inescapable to fail.  Now  he 
had to face the consequences:  Which side was which?  After all, the mushroom 
was as round as it could possible be,  so there was no way to determine which 
side would be one and which other.
 A  pain  crashed  through Warchild's consciousness - he  had  another  lucid 
moment.  The  total amount of these occasions during his life had been  very, 
very  rare.  The  fact that he had had two lucid moments this day  seemed  to 
indicate he was making progress.
 This all just serves to prove that statistics can be wrong quite utterly.
 During the time the lucid moment spent in Cronos brain, he picked two pieces 
off the mushroom - one on either side. He hoped it would work.
 Of  course,  the bit he first tried was the wrong one - Murphy's  law  works 
rather  effectively  even  for those who often seem immune  to  the  laws  of 
causality and faculty.
 The shrinking that resulted from eating the wrong bit of mushroom was rather 
devastating.  One moment Cronos was still about four inches tall,  and  after 
the  blink of an eye he was suddenly very small.  The mushroom towered  above 
him  like a vast monument of the first nuclear explosion -  only  much,  much 
bigger and at this particular moment vastly more impressive.
 "Oops," the mercenary annex hired gun said.
 A  beetle,  that had been about as large as his fist until about one  second 
ago,  now looked at him even more threateningly than the frightfully cute and 
flawlessly yellow giant chicken had done before. It moved its antennas, as if 
probing the air for molecules that had had the audacity to pop off  Warchild. 
It seemed to like what it sensed, and came closer for a first bite.
 Cronos swallowed most of the other piece of mushroom,  wishing to become big 
as soon as possible. There was a very short crunchy sound, not unlike that of 
a  black boot crushing a beetle,  and after that there were only the  strange 
feeling of an elevator quickly gaining upward momentum, and clouds.
 He  tried  to feel his head,  but couldn't.  His hands simply  weren't  long 
enough  to  reach his head that now seemed to be balancing on  a  neck  quite 
resembling some sort of nutty snake.  He was having problems breathing, which 
Cronos  reckoned had something to do with space being much closer now  -  and 
wasn't space empty?
 He  looked  down.  Now and again the clouds around him would tear up  for  a 
moment,  allowing a brief glimpse at the scenery below.  Most of it was green 
with a spot of blue here and there - which he assumed were lakes of sorts.  A 
bit to his left he saw a small cottage with a thatched roof. In its garden he 
saw a White Kangaroo,  a badger dressed as a butler,  and a Skunk that seemed 
to be out cold.  On a road,  way off before him,  he saw a toad driving a car 
rather more rapidly than it should.
 He was surely feeling spaced out - which is a fairly accurate description of 
what  a  bite  of  the growing side of a mushroom can do  to  you  if  you've 
previously inhaled the smokes of certain mind-expanding herbs. When he closed 
his eyes, his head seemed to be rollercoasting. When he opened them, it still 
seemed to.
 The  feeling wore off just in time for him to be aware of some  creature  of 
the  sky  flying into a part of his neck.  He looked down to  his  neck  that 
seemed  to hang below him like a rope from a balloon.  He couldn't quite  see 
his body.
 A small flying thing circled around him,  towards his head, up from the spot 
where it had collided with his neck.
 "Can't you watch where you're going?" a voice said, now close to his ear. It 
was  fairly obvious that the voice wanted to sound enraged,  but  it  totally 
failed in obtaining the objective.  Instead the voice radiated infinite  love 
and passion.
 The owner of the voice flew around him,  so that in the end Cronos could see 
it straight before him, fluttering and complaining. It was a small angel, no, 
a flabby baby with Pampers on.  It had a golden bow in its tiny hands,  and a 
very small arrow container was located on its back, attached to a strap.
 "Oh no," the tiny winged form said when seeing Warchild, "you."
 "I'm afraid you've got the advantage," Cronos said,  having heard this  sort 
of dialogue in a film once, "I have never seen you before."
 The  baby  angel  tried to put on a scornful face,  but  only  succeeded  in 
showing infinite dedication and friendship.
 "You  big lummox," it said,  gayly flapping its wings now and flying to  and 
fro in front of Warchild's face,  "Don't you remember Loucynda?  Or Penelope? 
And what about Klarine Appledoor?"
 Cronos  had  fleeting visions of a most beautiful shaped breast  upon  which 
hung  a  name plate,  of coal-powered engines hidden in folds of  flesh  that 
functioned to pump around gallons and gallons of blood, and of a rusty-locked 
chastity belt.
 "Sure  I  remember them," he said to the little angel,  "But I  still  don't 
remember you."
 Warchild  had not been really sure of many things in his life - but  he  had 
been  sure the Virgin had had no tail and he was sure he didn't know who  the 
hell this little angel was.
 "I  see," the angel said in a tone that was supposed to convey  sadness  and 
hurt but that only spread warmth and devotion,  "You really,  honestly  don't 
know me."
 Cronos shook his head. "No."
 He didn't even feel sorry, nor did he feel slightly guilty.
 Quickly, the flying marksbaby changed subject.
 "I've seen you look better,  Cronos Jehannum," it said as if visiting an old 
friend,  "Much better than this huge ugly thing with a neck like a spaced-out 
snake and breath smelling of weird herbs, raspberries and tobacco icecream."
 "I'm  no ugly thing with a neck like a spaced-out snake and breath  smelling 
of weird herbs,  raspberries and tobacco icecream," Cronos said,  "I'm but  a 
small mercenary annex hired gun." It seemed that a tear welled up in his eye. 
It was visible for an instant of a nanosecond, then Warchild blinked his eyes 
and it had vanished.
 "If  you flew into me just to insult me," Cronos said in as menacing a  tone 
as he could manage with half of his speech apparatus a rough two hundred feet 
below him, "I'll have to insist you leave."
 Another quote from a film he'd forgotten to forget.
 "OK,"  the  minute angeloid muttered,  "If that's how you want to  play  it. 
Fine. Don't expect me around when you need me, though."
 It flapped its wings somewhat more intensely, after which it flew off into a 
cloud and vanished from sight.
 Warchild  remembered  the  pieces of mushroom he should still  have  in  his 
hands, a long way down. He bent his neck in a huge arc until it almost formed 
an "O",  with his head close to his chest - which was quite like a spaced-out 
snake  indeed.  By  biting  off  small pieces off each  bit  of  mushroom  he 
eventually reached his right height - or at least he got the surroundings  to 
the  sizes  he seemed to recollect from before he'd made the jump  into  that 
hole  under the tree in the park near his motel.  He stuffed the bits of  the 
mushroom he had left in his pocket.
 It felt strange being in a world that had its usual size again.  He  checked 
his  neck.  It was still there - or,  rather,  it was still as always  hidden 
between  his  broadly  built  shoulders and his square  head  with  the  long 
sideburns.
 He walked away from where he had seen the White Kangaroo's cottage - he  had 
no intention of ever having manure hurled at him again,  certainly not if the 
manure had the tendency to transform into raspberries, of all things!
 Within  a few minutes he found a small house.  It was scarsely more  than  a 
yard high,  however,  so he reckoned it would be best to eat some more of the 
mushroom bit that could make the world grow again.
 He did. The world grew.

                            VI - FROG AND GARLIC

 As  soon  as  he had gotten used to his diminished  size,  he  took  in  his 
surroundings - that's the kind of thing a mercenary is trained to do. He kept 
an  eye on the house for a while until he reckoned it safe to go in for  some 
more detailed exploration.
 He had just come out of his hiding when he saw a small DHL car coming up the 
driveway.  He had seen many weird things while he was underground,  but  this 
thing beat everything:  The car had two eyes popping up from the bonnet  much 
in the way a frog's would.  There was no front bumper on it either -  instead 
it  had a huge,  grinning mouth.  It looked like one of those  small  child's 
toys, only life-sized.
 Cronos was even more amazed to see the car rise on its hind wheels and knock 
the door with a front tyre, sounding like a soft, rubbery 'thud'. It whistled 
a postman Pat tune in an almost absurdly casual way.
 A mole opened the door.  The animal was covered, like most of its kind, in a 
thick  black fur that was most fit for crawling underground.  Unlike most  of 
its kind,  however, it wore dark glasses and a sports jacked, put on back-to-
front,  with a Kriss Kross logo patched on its back (which was in the front). 
Behind both its ears it wore hearing aids that looked every bit as impressive 
as  the  car audio systems that cheap people living in  cheap  neighbourhoods 
have  built  in  their  second-hand  Opel  Mantas  to  impress  their   cheap 
neighbours.  It  bobbed its head left and right like Stevie Wonder  (or,  for 
that matter, like Ray Charles). The fact that the mole was handicapped at two 
of its most important senses,  by the way,  suffices to prove that only  this 
way  one can fully appreciate Kriss or Kross or,  indeed,  both of the  silly 
brats.
 "I AM ADRIAN,  THE BUTLER!" the mole yelled at the DHL vehicle, "CAN I BE OF 
SERVICE TO YOU!"
 The  car heaved a sigh,  which almost perfectly succeeded in  conveying  the 
meaning of the sentence "Oh no, not that stupid mole again..."
 The mole, of course, was blissfully unaware of this.
 "I have a message for the Mayor," the car said,  the sound of a barrel  full 
of  pistons  rolling  down a mountain into a  car  mechanic's  workshop,  "An 
invitation of the King of Spades to play golf.
 "THANK YOU, SIR!" the butler said.
 The car went inside.  The butler closed the door,  quite forgetting to  walk 
back in itself.
 Cronos decided it was time to do something.  Anything.  He walked up to  the 
front door and knocked on it a couple of times.
 "THAT'S USELESS, SIR!" the butler said.
 Warchild looked at the insectivore for a couple of moments. Deciding against 
starting  anything resembling a conversation,  he tried to mimic "Why?"  with 
his facial expression.
 Remarkably, he succeeded.
 Even more remarkably, the blind mole sensed it.
 "WE ARE BOTH ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE DOOR!" the mole explained,  "SO I CAN'T 
LET YOU IN AS SUCH. AND INSIDE THEY CAN'T HEAR YOU ANYWAY!"
 Warchild  put aside the implications of what the butler  said  for,  indeed, 
quite a racket seemed to be going on inside, though he couldn't make out what 
it  was all about.  He was just going to connect his ear to the door when  it 
flew  open and a self-cleaning garlic squeezer missed him by a mere  fraction 
of inches. It flew off into the bushes.
 It  was followed by an insulted red DHL car which brushed some dust off  its 
wings  and disappeared down the road,  bonnet in the air,  muttering  angrily 
about idiots and the things that bolts go in.
 The mole walked in and melted into what it probably considered to be one  of 
the more comfortable shadows that seemed to leap and lurch in the house.
 Cronos decided to walk in, too. He stumbled upon a wholly odd sight.
 He  had  entered  a kitchen that scented thoroughly of gas -  or  at  least, 
reckoned  Cronos,  of  something that smelled like gas.  He found  the  Mayor 
sitting on a stool in the middle of it, trying to soothe to sleep a baby that 
was  lying in his lap.  A cook wearing a flat black cap with  a  ridiculously 
erect  thingy on top of it and holding under his arm a lengthily shaped  loaf 
of bread cursed to himself as he appeared to have added too much red wine  to 
the  soup he was brewing.  He kept on adding garlic to  it,  too,  which  was 
probably  the main reason behind the intense smell that pervaded every  cubic 
inch of air and behind the baby refusing to be soothed.
 "It's OK, Maggie," the Mayor said, eyes watering, "it's OK. It'll be alright 
in a minute. Just let Francois here finish the soup. It won't be a minute."
 For a moment the baby seemed to contemplate the truth of this statement.  As 
a new wave of garlic smell wafted by and as it seemed to realise it would not 
be a minute indeed, however, it started refusing to be soothed with redoubled 
vigour.
 When  he tore his eyes off the ugly infant,  Cronos also noticed  the  Koala 
which sat rather inconspicuously behind the Mayor. It smiled broadly - rather 
too broadly for a Koala,  Warchild thought.  From ear to ear,  as a matter of 
fact.
 "Excuse  me," Cronos asked the Mayor,  unusually timidly for someone of  his 
persuasion, "but why does your Koala smile like that?"
 He wasn't at all interested at why the Koala smiled that way, but somehow he 
felt it would be the appropriate thing to ask.
 The  Mayor looked up at the mercenary annex hired gun,  seemed to gauge  him 
for half a second and then snorted.
 "It's  a  Cheshire Koala," he said as if it was common  knowledge.  After  a 
while,  during which Cronos had succeeded in not coming up with any noticable 
reply, the Mayor added, "You don't know a lot, do you?"
 Warchild  didn't like the tone of that remark,  but he'd be the last one  to 
lose  his  temper  over  something  involving  his  intelligence.  He'd  read 
somewhere that smart people didn't react to insults,  so he'd be damned if he 
did.
 He  snorted  in  reply  - or at least he produced  a  sound  not  completely 
dissimilar to it.
 All  of a sudden the cook turned around agitatedly.  He started  yelling  in 
some sort of foreign language that sounded as if all the accents were put  on 
the wrong syllables.  When the Mayor ignored him and continued trying to  put 
the baby to rest,  the cook started throwing things.  First he threw cutlery, 
then some pottery and eventually other things ranging from garlic pieces  and 
wine bottles to snail's houses and pictures of De Gaulle.
 The Mayor nor the baby seemed to notice the things being hurled at them, not 
even  when they bounced off them.  The baby simply continued crying,  so  the 
Mayor eventually resorted to singing sortof a lullaby.

                     "Shake and beat your little Maggie,
                        And fold her when she cries;
                         She's only a helpless baby,
                       But kick her 'till she's nice."

                                   CHORUS
                    (Where the cook and the baby joined)
                               "Hey Hey Hey!"

 The lullaby was having little effect.  Showing the total ineptness of men in 
the handling of babies,  he started bobbing the ugly creature up and down  on 
his lap in what was hardly a comforting fashion.  The baby started  hollering 
so loudly that Cronos could barely hear the words of the second verse:

                     "I shake and beat my little Maggie,
                       And I fold her when she cries;
                        For even though she's a baby,
                      I'll kick her 'till she's nice."

                                   CHORUS

                               "Hey Hey Hey!"

 Still the baby kept on crying and generally being any parent's nightmare. It 
was clear that the Mayor had no intent to cope with it any longer.  He  flung 
the ugly thing into Cronos' arms and got up.
 "I must get ready to play golf with the King," he said as he left the  house 
without as much as bidding the others goodbye.
 The baby made a distinctly queer sound.
 Warchild had never been one to handle babies - not unless they needed to  be 
manhandled,  that  is.  Ever since he had seen "Three Men and a Baby" he  was 
afraid of ever having to hold a toddler,  afraid of being urinated on, afraid 
of  having other people witness his shameful lack of talents in the  changing 
of nappies without getting excreta all over him.
 Deep  in  thought on how he was to get himself out  of  this  situation,  he 
wandered out of the Mayor's house into the forest.  He looked at the baby and 
was  considerably relieved to see that it seemed to have fallen  asleep.  Its 
mouth  had gone wide as if smiling,  and its eyes seemed to bulge out  a  bit 
when they were closed.
 He sat down on a tree stump.  Somewhere,  deep within him, paternal feelings 
were struggling to get out.  The baby,  ugly though it had been  before,  did 
have nicely bulging eyes and a a kind of friendly green complexion.
 Its  eyes opened and it said the first word Cronos had heard it utter -  not 
counting the hollering, crying and yelling.
 "Oo-Wrribbit," it said with a voice that sounded like warts, sticky wet skin 
and deep ponds filled with mud and tadpoles.
 To his considerable flummoxedness,  Warchild found himself holding a  human-
baby-sized  frog.  It  looked  quite absurd,  with  its  powerful  hind  legs 
extending from Cronos' grasp and its absolutely amphibian grin.
 He put it on the ground,  first checking to see if no-one had witnessed  him 
walking  around rather sillily with a large frog of sorts.  The animal  leapt 
off comfortably,  nonchalantly snatching an innocent fly from the air in mid-
leap.
 "Oh  shit no," the fly said as it stuck to the tongue,  just prior to  being 
swallowed whole and consequently digested, "Not again."
 Shortly  afterwards,  at  the  start of its following -  short  -  life,  it 
appeared  as a bowl of petunias at a totally different place and an  altitude 
of roughly 300 feet.
 In  the  mean  time the green jumping wet  thing,  totally  unaware  of  the 
petunia's pending death or most of the other things that were going on in the 
multiverse enveloping its wart-ridden form, disappeared in the shrubbery.
 Cronos,  for  his  part,  did  not  even notice  the  disappearance  of  the 
amphibian. Instead, most of his attention was absorbed by a Koala that sortof 
drifted  in front of a tree branch above him.  It was grinning inanely -  the 
kind  of  grin Warchild would otherwise rather have hit off the  face  if  it 
hadn't  been for the fact that the Koala looked cutely  cuddly  and,  indeed, 
cuddlily cute.
 He hoped the Koala knew the way around here.  He had seen it before,  so  he 
guessed it must be a native to this world underground.
 "Where should I go?" he asked.
 "Where do you want to go?" the Koala replied philosophycally.
 Cronos thought for a while. Peculiarly, it didn't hurt.
 "Not any place in particular," he concluded.
 "Then,"  the  Koala stated with a sense of importance not unlike that  of  a 
judge  sentencing  someone to death,  "you should walk into no  direction  in 
particular."
 "But..." Cronos said,  but his train of thought had already derailed by  the 
third dot. He decided upon another approach.
 "What kind of creatures live where?" he inquired.
 "Now that is a proper question," the Koala said,  smiling from ear to ear to 
the  point where Cronos thought the mouth might connect on the back  and  the 
top half of the fluffy head might flop off,  "To the east (it pointed to  the 
left) you will find the house of Mr.  Cranium. To the west (it pointed to the 
right) you will find Arthur and Martha's place."
 Cronos  nodded the way game show hosts nodd when listening to a  candidate's 
life history for the hundredth time.
 "They're all quite insane, you know," the Koala added as an afterthought.
 Warchild looked at it blankly.
 "No," the Koala said, "no, you probably wouldn't."
 The Koala considered it an opportune moment to start disappearing.  At first 
its fluffy tail faded away,  followed by its paws and body.  In the end there 
was only the head, some seconds later only the asinine smile.
 "That's funny," Cronos thought to himself, "Hmmm...I've seen a Koala without 
a grin but never have I seen a grin without a Koala."
 By the end of this thought the Koala had disappeared altogether, having been 
replaced  by the proverbial thin air in or behind which the animal seemed  to 
have vanished without as much as a >zonk<.
 The mercenary annex hired gun decided to go to Cranium's house.  It  sounded 
somehow like the most logical thing to do, even though even Cronos felt logic 
had  nothing to do with it.  He walked to the east until he saw a house -  at 
least  he instinctively knew it should be a house though it  actually  looked 
only like an enormous top side of a terrifyingly vast skull.  Two  ear-shaped 
forms were attached to its sides.  Some large birds had opted to build  nests 
in them.  Of the two huge half eye-sockets Mr.  Cranium seemed to have made a 
door and a window.
 The house was out of match with Cronos' size. He therefore decided he should 
eat  some  of  the right side of the mushroom he found he still  had  in  his 
pockets.
 His surroundings shrunk somewhat.
 He wondered what kind of person would go and live in such an absurdly  silly 
place. You'd have to be as mad as a hatter!

                           VII - A TIMELESS PARTY

 He probed the front door,  which swung open invitingly into a room in  which 
he saw a long table on which sat three - or were it four? - people.
 Most  prominent  of  all  sat a person whom  he  guessed  was  Mr.  Cranium, 
excentric  and  slightly mad.  He had a large bald head with  tufts  of  hair 
behind and above the ears,  an impressive attempt at a failed moustache,  and 
half-glasses  resting  on a pompous nose that looked as if it had  just  been 
harvested from a beet plant and glued to his face ineptly.
 To the left of the excentric gentleman sat a siamese twin.  One of them wore 
a  T-shirt  with the name "Arthur" written on it,  the other  wore  one  with 
"Martha" on it.
 Now  Cronos also noticed something sitting between the siamese twin and  Mr. 
Cranium.  It was a huddled form of a human, long-haired dude with John Lennon 
glasses sitting partly behind an almost absurdly huge mug of beer.
 "War?  Knuckles Busted?  Stuhl gebaut?  No Rob!" the human form muttered  in 
what seemed like sleep.  He belched, wagged his head, then farted. After that 
he  -  or it - seemed to drop in a more intense sort of sleep from  which  no 
further miscellaneous sounds arose.
 Warchild cast a glance at the clock. It was noon.
 The  creatures present,  with the exception of the nodding  humanoid  thing, 
looked  at Cronos in fright when he barged into the house and helped  himself 
to a chair.  Obviously they considered it a very uncivilized act of him  just 
to  walk in and sit down and the same table where they were enjoying  a  nice 
beer.  They  succeeded  in showing undisguised disgust and contempt  at  this 
infringement of what must be one of their prime rules of life.
 "Would you..." Arthur said, "...like a cup of tea?" Martha finished.
 Warchild  nodded.  Surely  there  could  be no harm  in  them  offering  him 
something as innocent as a cup of hot water with herbal extracts?
 Arthur  nor  Martha made a move,  however.  They seemed to  be  waiting  for 
Cronos' coin to fall.  It took a while. Then, as if reluctant to obey Newton, 
a coin fell with an inaudible 'clank'.
 "But there is no tea," the mercenary annex hired gun finally said,  "And you 
must  know it is highly impolite to offer me something that you  don't  have. 
Not to mention that it might be lethal." He added the latter bit with a  hint 
of threat in his voice.
 Now Mr. Cranium spoke for the first time.
 "It was highly impolite of you," Richard retorted,  "just to enter my  place 
and sit down at this table."
 Wisely,  Warchild decided not to react.  Instead he glanced at the clock. It 
was noon exactly.
 Arthur  and Martha seemed to have forgotten all about Cronos  already.  They 
were lifting large mugs of ale to their lips and drinking.  The humanoid with 
the  long  black  hair and the small round glasses  continued  having  a  nap 
attack.  It snored quite ghastly,  as if sleeping the sleep of the Dead. Only 
Mr.  Cranium kept on looking at Warchild unperturbably - or perhaps at a spot 
just behind Cronos' skull.
 It  unsettled Cronos somewhat.  He was not used to  feeling  unsettled,  and 
generally took care of feeling very settled indeed by obliterating any  thing 
or  person that might have the slightest of unsettling effects on  him.  Last 
time  this  had happened was when quite an innocent motorist had  folded  his 
Chevrolet  sedan  around  Warchild's left leg when he had  crossed  the  road 
rather  suddenly.  Though  putting  Warchild's mind at ease,  it  had  had  a 
profoundly unsettling effect on the motorist's next of kin,  the stomachs  of 
the two dozen people that stood watching and the social worker of the  sewage 
maintenance  man  who just happened to be at work in the manhole  down  which 
miscellaneous unidentifiable but definitely gory bits had dropped.
 Just in time to prevent the rather notorious acts Warchild would have deemed 
necessary to settle himself, Mr. Cranium said, "Do have a beer."
 It did not so much sound like an invitation as a command.
 Warchild reached out and got hold of a mug of formidable dimensions.  In  it 
was  a foamy liquid that smelled slightly of urine topped by the  stuff  that 
comes off rancid milk when you skim it.
 Cronos  sighed a deep sigh of relief.  Even though he wouldn't  recognise  a 
good  red  wine  if  he would drown in it,  there was no  way  he  would  not 
recognize a mug of Dessip if he saw one. This was real men's stuff.
 He put the mug to his lips and started drinking.  When, after two minutes of 
swallowing without bothering to breathe in between,  he had downed the entire 
mug  he had just time enough to burp the Mother of all Burps  before  passing 
out at noon exactly.
 It is said that being sober is not the opposite of being drunk,  much in the 
way that silence is not the opposite of noise but just the absence of it. The 
opposite of silence, of course, is anti-silence, the kind of silence that can 
shred  bones,  grind minds and generally cause vastly more  intense  insanity 
than the worst imaginable LSD trip,  the kind of silence you get when you  go 
beyond silence and come out the other side where sound un-exists.
 The  opposite  of  sober,  much in the same way,  is  anti-sober  (which  is 
sometimes  referred to as Dessip in popular speech,  hence the  beer's  brand 
name). It does not leave you flat-out drunk and tottering across the road, it 
does not cause spasms or retching,  nor any pains in any regions of the body. 
People  who suffer from anti-soberness suddenly see what the world is  really 
like  - the Truth,  the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth - and would  by 
now  have changed the world to a far better place if it hadn't been  for  the 
fact  that anti-soberness usually lasts for a very  short  time,  immediately 
after  which the stage of brainmurdering drunkenness sets in  (including  the 
effects hinted at above, as well as some surpassingly more nauseating ones).
 If a Cyrius Cybernetics BrainSlator would have been connected to  Warchild's 
skull,  the following short and very intense conversation with himself  could 
have been recorded:

 "So  this is what the world is really like?  Hm.  Does not look like  a  fun 
place at all.  What are those weird things?  Maybe if I'd change a few things 
it would be a happy place for all sentient beings in the entire univ..."
 HEAVY MENTAL 'THUD' (signalling the end of the Dessipid phase).
 "Oh my. Where's the loo?"

 After that,  even the sophisticated microcircuitry in the BrainsLator  would 
have  had difficulty noticing any brain activity other than  that  associated 
with the sudden reverse movement of the entire digestive system,  followed by 
a  deep sleep,  some more reverse digestive activities,  a lot more  of  deep 
sleep and,  finally,  thoughts about a lamp that protruded from a high, domed 
ceiling.

 The  lamp seemed to gaze at him intently.  It seemed determined to  continue 
staring  at him,  as if it was playing a game of "Who looks away first."  The 
lamp seemed keen on winning.  Insofar as lamps could have any expression,  it 
looked smug.
 In the end the lamp won.
 From his horizontal position on the ground,  Cronos looked around  carefully 
and  found  himself back in the large hall with the  many  doors,  the  lamps 
hanging from the ceiling and the glass table with the golden key on it.
 He shook his head once he recognized the place he was in. He had no idea how 
it  had happened,  but he surely wasn't going to try and find out - the  mere 
thought didn't even start to cross his mind.
 He  sat  upright,  an intense pain jabbing at his head for a  few  throbbing 
heartbeats.  When it had ebbed away he ventured standing up. Apart from a few 
more  painful jabs,  which he was trained to suppress,  everything seemed  to 
work out fine.
 Now  what  had  gone  wrong  last time?  He  had  taken  the  key  when  the 
surroundings were small and when they were big the key was back on the table. 
Hm.  He felt in his pockets, relieved to find some of the mushroom still left 
in  it - of the side that would make the surroundings grow.  It was the  last 
bit. He hoped he wouldn't be needing any more of it.
 He took the key, walked to the small door, opened it with the small key, ate 
something of the mushroom, shrank to a height of about half a yard and walked 
out onto the splendidness of King Spades' Green.

                          VIII - KING SPADES' GREEN

 It  was  the  kind of green that golf game designers would  love  to  buy  a 
license  of.  Roughs were located at nasty spots in the hilly landscape  that 
looked  almost  artificial in its neatness.  A couple of trees seemed  to  be 
meticulously  placed  here and there.  Beautiful rosebushes  were  placed  at 
places where they seemed to fit most perfectly.  In the distance Cronos saw a 
flag or two, beckoning in the soft breeze.
 These were the kind of surroundings where he would gladly spend the rest  of 
his  life  killing people - even though there didn't seem to  be  any  phones 
around.
 His arrival at King Spades' Green seemed not to have gone by unnoticed. From 
behind a rosebush he though he saw someone signal urgently.  He walked to the 
bush,  noticing  that  all  its roses were red except for  a  white  one.  He 
considered it odd, but heeded it no further.
 "Psst!" the voice hissed,  as urgently as its owner had previously beckoned, 
"Go away! If the King sees you on his Green he'll chop off your gonads!"
 Cronos now saw the thing that was talking to him - for it was a thing indeed 
- was a miniature model of the Chinese Wall with arms and legs. This was very 
odd,  but not half as odd as the fact that it spoke in what Cronos failed  to 
recognize as a Yorkshire accent.
 "Go away!" it repeated, still quite urgent, "I am very serious. Take a hike! 
Go  and steal bicycles!  Beat it!  Go away unless you want to end up like  so 
many others! Piss o..."
 The miniature Chinese Wall swallowed its words as it was interrupted by  the 
sound of footsteps coming closer behind it. Before either the Chinese Wall or 
Cronos  knew it,  they were surrounded by four totally different  dogs,  four 
totally different cars and three miniature Wonders of the World (indeed,  and 
all boasting legs and arms). In front of them stood a playing card - the King 
of Spades, flanked by a Weasel dressed in a mink coat. The King was muttering 
something  quite angrily about a bowl of petunias,  rubbing a bump on one  of 
its edges. The Weasel seemed just to be agreeing.
 "Ha!" the King suddenly exclaimed, his voice triumphant, "Finally I have the 
Chinese Wall! As I already have the Pyramids of Gizeh, the Colossos of Rhodos 
and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, that means I'll surely beat the others at 
Quartette!"
 "Gruesomely so, Your Highness," the Weasel agreed.
 The  King surveyed the dogs,  the cars and the Wonders of the World  with  a 
satisfied grin.
 Nobody really knew what to say to that,  or dared to.  Even though he  would 
probably have dared, Cronos didn't quite know what to say either.
 "What is that doing on my green?" the King suddenly inquired when he noticed 
Warchild standing around, stabbing a finger at the mercenary annex hired gun, 
"Surely that is not one of the objects to be collected?"
 Unanimously,  the  other collectables shook their heads.  Nope -  there  was 
definitely no category to fit in a dim-witted human.
 "Well  then,"  the  King cried,  "What are you waiting  for?  Chop  off  his 
gonads!"
 "Diabolically so,  Your Supremeness!" the Weasel chimed in enthusiastically, 
its tiny teeth flashing for a moment.
 Warchild felt an all-too-familiar sensation creep down his stomach and  into 
his loins. Visions of upset females flashed before his eyes for a second.
 A  broad-shouldered  Gorilla,  Warchild's  more primitive alter  ego  so  it 
seemed, appeared from behind a bush as if it had been hidden there all along. 
It licked its lower lip as if it was craving for a banana,  and in its  hands 
it held a knife that looked very sharp indeed.
 The King turned around, probably having other pressing matters on his mind.
 "Come on, Cat," he commanded.
 "Disgustingly so,  Your Ampleness," the Weasel assented, following the King. 
The dogs,  cars and miniature Wonders of the World followed, too. The Chinese 
Wall managed to cast a fleeting glance of symphathy at Warchild.
 The Gorilla grinned.  The knife flashed.  A killer gadget was fumbled  with, 
useless without a phone at hand. An upper lip was licked.
 At  around  that instant,  it became no longer  apparent  what  happened.  A 
cartoonesque  cloud of sand evolved around the human and the  primate,  grass 
flinging off in several directions.  The occasional sounds along the lines of 
"BASH", "WHACK" and, indeed, "THUD", were hurled at who cared to stand by and 
watch.
 The  sounds were enough to have the King decide that the  pressing  matters, 
whatever they were, might have to wait.
 "I put five on the human," the Hanging Gardens of Babylon cried.
 "Ten on the gorilla," the DHL car yelled.
 "Which one?" a Great Dane asked.
 "No bets!" the King shouted.
 "Horribly so, Your Elatedness!" Cat the Weasel concorded.
 "I disagree!" a Pitbull grunted.
 "One more remark like that," the King whispered between his teeth, "and I'll 
have your gonads chopped off as well!"
 "Detestingly so, Your Splendidness!" Cat joined in.
 Few moments later the dust settled upon the unconscious form of the Gorilla. 
Its  fur was wrinkled,  it had a black eye and its nose seemed broken with  a 
tiny stream of blood pouring out of one nostril.
 It was dead, too.
 Cronos brushed off some grass and sand, then snorted derisively.
 "It  seems," the King said,  a hint of reverence in his royal  voice,  "That 
perhaps your privates don't need to be chopped off after all."
 "Resentfully so, Your Supremeness," the Weasel added, slightly hesitantly.
 "Perhaps I should invite you to a game of golf," the King concluded after  a 
second or two of thought.  He shushed away the Quartette  collectables.  Some 
Pink  Flamingoes appeared from behind bushes where they seemed to  have  been 
all  along,  as well as a couple of Hedgehogs that had probably been  hogging 
behind a hedge all that time.
 The  Weasel didn't say anything.  It just looked at Warchild,  then  at  the 
gorilla. A shiver ran down its weasly spine.
 "You know what it's like with our kind," the King added  jocularly,  patting 
Cronos on the back as if they had been pub pals for years, "We call a spade a 
spade. Takes some getting used to, but most manage. Eventually."
 One of the Pink Flamingoes was inserted in Warchild's hands,  head down. One 
of the Hedgehogs slowly coiled itself at Cronos' feet.
 "Am  I supposed to hit the Hedgehog with the Flamingo?" Cronos asked  nobody 
in particular.
 "Yes,"  his  Flamingo muttered in an irritated tone,  "you're  supposed  to. 
Don't worry. I'm used to it. I suppose the Hedgehogs are, too."
 Warchild   swung  the  Flamingo's  head  in  a  totally   incompetent   way. 
Miraculously  he succeeded in letting the Hedgehog fly off in  the  distance, 
where it eventually landed on the ground, dizzy, after having collided with a 
tree which it would have preferred somewhat less sturdy.
 Cronos  walked  to the place where the Hedgehog  lay,  an  unnaturally  pale 
complexion  on  it.  Suddenly  the White Kangaroo was walking  next  to  him, 
carrying on its shoulder another Flamingo.
 "Where's the Mayor?" Warchild asked.
 "Be silent," the marsupial whispered,  "He's sentenced to have his you-know-
whats chopped off."
 "Hm," Cronos hm-ed.
 "Don't you think," the Kangaroo said, desperate to change the subject, "that 
playing golf is difficult?"
 To be honest,  it has to be told that Cronos even found it difficult to play 
croquet  - let alone play golf with a live Flamingo that constantly tried  to 
bend its neck so as to avoid actually hitting the live Hedgehogs,  which also 
found it necessary to walk off constantly.
 He nodded to the Kangaroo,  that had in the mean time already walked off  to 
another hole altogether.
 At  that  instant the Cheshire Koala appeared again,  bobbing  gently  above 
Cronos, who looked at it with rather bewildered incomprehension.
 As  soon as it had enough of a mouth to speak with,  it inquired as  to  how 
things were going.
 "Well,  actually things are sortof strange down here," Cronos said, "but I'm 
starting  to  get  used to it.  Or at least I think I  am,  so  I  might  not 
actually."
 The King saw the mercenary annex hired gun talking to the floating Koala. He 
came  closer,  intent to find out everything about any odd things  that  were 
happening on his green. The Weasel tailed behind, muttering an agreement.
 "What are you talking to?" the King asked.
 "I  think it's a something Koala," Cronos replied,  quickly adding  "but  it 
isn't mine," in fear of having some vitals chopped off by a hypothetic animal 
more formidable than the Gorilla.
 "I don't like the wretched creature," the King said, turning up his nose and 
extending his hand, "but it may kiss my hand."
 The Cheshire Koala made a strange sound,  then said, "I'd rather not, if you 
don't mind."
 The King's healthy black'n'white complexion turned red slowly,  then  passed 
beyond that and eventually became an angry sort of deep purple.
 "I want its gonads chopped off this instant!  The impertinent sod!" the King 
cried, more agitated then Cronos had ever seen him so far.
 "It's a Koala, Your Solubleness," whispered Cat.
 Warchild  decided  it might be wise to go off and attempt to hit  some  more 
Hedgehogs.
 The Flamingo, which had intently followed the proceedings that were going on 
around  the  King and the Koala,  was entirely unaware of what  hit  it  (or, 
rather,  what  it hit) until it was abused into moving an  innocent  Hedgehog 
some three hundred yards away.
 "Good,"  thought  Cronos to himself,  rather satisfied,  smiling  smugly  at 
himself.  He  trundled  off towards the part of the green  where  the  spikey 
creature seemed to have hit the ground.  The Flamingo,  all but  unconscious, 
hung across Warchild's broad shoulders.
 The Hedgehog lay in a state of stupor.  Obviously it could no longer rely on 
either the ability of the Flamingo to bend its neck away in time nor its  own 
ability  to trudge off when noone was looking.  Cronos' utter  ineptitude  at 
playing golf had obviously been too much for either of the creatures to  take 
into consideration.
 Warchild  had folded the Pink Flamingo (which moaned a muffled moan in  some 
sort  of  protest) into shape and was just about to swing it with  his  usual 
lack of talent when the sounds of consternation reached the inner part of his 
highly trained mercenary hearing aid.
 He lowered the Flamingo (which sighed the deepest sigh of relief it had ever 
found  necessary to sigh) and walked back to where some things seemed  to  be 
going on that involved the Cheshire Koala.
 All  of  the  major parties involved in the  conflict  started  speaking  to 
Warchild at once.  His brain overflowed, his eyes crossed, his lower jaw fell 
open rather sillily and a slab of wet meat fell out. Eventually they all shut 
up, allowing Cronos to get his system going again.
 The  executioner,  a  Chimpanzee who was obviously intended  as  (but  quite 
failed  to  be) a spare Gorilla,  said you could not chop off any  gonads  if 
there was no body to chop them off from.
 The  King  just said that if something wouldn't be done about  this  pronto, 
everybody's gonads would have to go.  Suddenly everybody started looking very 
grave.
 Having  not been trained to be a judge or jury,  indeed,  only  having  been 
trained  in  disciplines  fairly closely connected  with  his  profession  of 
mercenary  annex  hired  gun,  it was remarkable  with  which  advise  Cronos 
succeeded in coming up.
 "Well," he said,  gravely so as to fit the mood,  "it's the Mayor's Koala so 
you could consult with him."
 After  it saw the King cast a short but intensely meaningful glance  at  its 
scrotch  the  executioner ran off immediately,  making the kind  of  assorted 
noises that monkeys make when their trees are being burned down.
 When after a while it came back with Mayor,  the Cheshire Koala had vanished 
entirely.
 Some of the creatures present start to look for it nervously. The others got 
back to the game.

                         IX - WHO BROUGHT THE SKUNK?

 The Mayor was happy to see Cronos.  Nobody had ever felt happy to see Cronos 
again,  except  possibly for his dear Mother and the great loves of his  life 
(of  which  there had been preciously few),  so it made him  feel  all  funny 
inside.
 They chatted idlily for a very short while.  The conversation was cut  short 
mainly  by  the  fact that Cronos found himself constantly  capable  only  of 
talking about killing people and the gadgets required for that,  which tended 
to  put off the Mayor.  The man would probably never be happy to  see  Cronos 
again.
 The Mayor was oddly relieved to find something else to direct his  attention 
to  when two biped Crocodiles suddenly popped out of  proverbial  nothingness 
and clasped hold of him.
 "Resistance is useless!" one of them bellowed in a most Vogonesque  fashion, 
prodding  the Mayor with a stick in a rather unfriendly  manner.  The  second 
guard looked at Cronos mutely,  if possible even more menacing than the other 
had spoken.  It was a look that suggested the beholder to either piss off  or 
get his butt kicked - which Warchild of course totally failed to recognize as 
such.
 Assuming  it  was some sort of mysterious Wonderland ceremony  of  greeting, 
Cronos  attempted to return the nasty grin as evilly as he could  manage.  He 
found it difficult as he lacked the required dental outfit.  Nonetheless, the 
guard  started  to  sweat  and suddenly found  it  necessary  to  direct  its 
attention  to the manner in which its esteemed colleague  continued  prodding 
the Mayor.
 "Might  I inquire as to the reasons for my apprehension?" the  Mayor  asked, 
trying to sound somewhat dignified but failing.
 "You may," said the second guard in a matter-of-fact way, followed by one of 
his ominous glares and silence. The Mayor started to sweat.
 "Resistance  is useless!" the other guard bellowed,  as if trying to make  a 
point.  It  prodded again.  It was rather obvious it liked doing it.  It  had 
probably been hit a lot by pop and mom Croc.
 They  lead the Mayor off to a large amphi-theatre court that had  previously 
been  hidden from sight by some purple trees.  Cronos,  for lack of  anything 
better to do, decided to follow and see what would happen.

 The  court was quite large.  On top of what seemed to be not unlike a  stage 
there were a desk behind which sat the King of Spades and Cat the  Weasel,  a 
chair and table on which (for a reason unaccountable) lay a Limburg Pie,  and 
two  benches on which sat a variety of jury-creatures  scribbling  zealously. 
Before the desk stood Ted the Skunk,  flanked at a safe distance by two other 
Crocodile guards wearing pegs on their noses.
 Cronos saw that the jury consisted mostly of creatures he had met during his 
stay Underground.  He saw the Koala,  the Ant, the Kaka, the Falcon, Mortimer 
the Badger,  Adrian the Mole, Mr. Richard Cranium and Arthur and Martha - the 
last two sitting closely together, talking avidly about something or other.
 "Please  lead  in the defendant," the King said,  trying to make  his  voice 
sound weighty and succeeding rather well.
 "Most obnoxiously so, Your Flatulence," Cat agreed.
 The two Crocodile guards that had fetched the Mayor now lead the poor man to 
the chair behind the table on which lay the Limburg Pie. It was a cherry one. 
It  puzzled  him.  The guards posted themselves at each side  of  the  Mayor, 
disabling him from escaping should he have intended to.
 Cronos  saw there was only one place left for him to sit,  which was  amidst 
the jury-creatures. He folded himself between the Kaka and the Koala.
 A murmur ran through the jurors and most of the attending audience that  sat 
opposite the judge's table on the other side of the amphi-theatric structure.
 "Resistance  is useless!" something shouted at the top of its  voice,  after 
which the audience's droning quickly died away.
 "Zonk..." whispered the Koala, a bit sad.
 There were some instantes of hushed silence, hanging in the air like a death 
verdict.  Then  the King rose from his seat,  and with him everybody  in  the 
court.
 "Herald!" the King shouted, "read the accusation!"
 The  same  White Kangaroo that had ran into Warchild  at  several  occasions 
during  his  stay  in  Wonderland  now  appeared  on  the  stage.  It  looked 
ridiculous,  what  with  half of a trumpet sticking out of its pouch  and  it 
wearing a powdered wig of sorts.  It unfolded a piece of paper,  waited until 
everybody sat again and started to read.
 "The  accused,  Mayor  Mr.  Johann Gambolputty  de  von  Ausfern-schplenden- 
schlitter- crasscrenbon-fried-digger- dingle-  dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein-
von-knacker-thrasher-applebanger-horowitz-ticolensic-bur-ander-knotty-
spelltinkle-grandlich...  (here  it  had to breathe deeply,  after  which  it 
continued   as  if  nothing  had   happened)   ...grumblemeyer-spelterwasser-
kurstlich-himble-eisen-bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein-nurnburger-bratwustle-
gernspurten-mitz-weimache-luber-hundsfut-gumberaber-shonedanker-kalbsfleisch-
mittler-aucher  von Hautkopft of Ulm,  henceforth to be referred to  as  'the 
Mayor' for economic reasons, is accused of...bringing Ted the Skunk!"
 Some "ooohs" and "aaahs" went through the audience,  after which they hushed 
again  as the White Kangaroo continued,  "The Court calls the first  witness, 
Miss...er...Virgin."
 It took out the trumpet and blew a cheap Louis Armstrong impression.
 A door at stage left was thrown open and a bailiff showed in the  ostensibly 
nude form of the Virgin.  Some whistles arose from the male spectators,  some 
eyeglasses  were connected to the females.  Although the  audience  consisted 
solely  of various animals and birds,  none of them seemed to remain  totally 
unaffected by the way in which the Virgin's beautiful long hair covered vital 
bits of her anatomy and simultaneously revealed enough of them to shake  (not 
stir) anyone's imagination.
 To add extra effect to the Virgin's arrival,  Cronos' system considered that 
precise moment opportune to start growing a bit.  The Kaka cleared its throat 
and inserted a feathery elbow in Warchild's side.
 "Would you mind not growing,  Sir?" it said irritatedly.  It sounded like  a 
parrot  immitating  human  speech  in an awkward way  -  which  was  probably 
precisely what it did.
 "You're growing, too, mind you," Cronos retorted.
 "Would you mind," the creature said, insulted, "keeping those filthy remarks 
to yourself?"
 It  turned  around demonstratively to study the  Virgin,  avidly  scribbling 
things on its piece of paper.
 Forward  stepped a Hyena,  wearing a powdered white wig just like the  White 
Kangaroo which looked even much more ridiculous on this African carnivore. It 
also  wore a black cape of some kind.  It walked as if thoroughly aware  that 
everyone was looking at it, and enjoying it.
 "Erm...er...," the Hyena started,  having difficulty retaining his composure 
with   such  a  mass  of  soft,   naked,   human  flesh  in  front   of   it, 
"Miss...er...Virgin,  what  have  you to say  about  Johann  Gam...  er...the 
Mayor?"
 The  Virgin  looked around at the assembled crowd as if waiting for  a  most 
opportune moment to start her testimony. Suddenly she did.
 "The Mayor is innocent," she said simply.
 "Ah!" the Hyena cried.
 "That is a most important thing to know," the King said.
 "Most hideously so, Your Stupefyingness!" the Weasel chimed in.
 "Oooh," said some of the spectators.
 "Aaah," said some others.
 The jurors were busy scribbling things on their notepads.  Cronos considered 
it odd that they all spelled guilty like "guilty".
 In came a Snake now.  A hush went through the crowd,  for it was none  other 
than Tansa,  a lawyer enjoying global fame in Wonderland.  It was reknown for 
its capability of bending justice to its own needs,  something it was  better 
at even than most other lawyers. It, too, wore some sort of powdered wig.
 "Might  I interrogate the witnesssss now?" it said,  its voice  filled  with 
devious cunningness,  if indeed the sound of a punctured car tyre losing  air 
could have any such qualities.
 The King nodded gravely. The Weasel nodded too, but emphatically.
 "Misssss  Virgin,"  Tansa began,  "what make you capable  of  claiming  that 
Joh...er... the Mayor isssss innosssssent?"
 "Well," the Virgin started, "..."
 "Isssss  it  no  ssssso," the Snake interrupted,  "that you  can  only  know 
thisssss if you've DONE IT YOURSSSSSELF?"
 The  reptile  rose to its full height in front of  the  witness,  trying  to 
intimidate her.
 There  was  a  satisfied murmuring from  the  crowd.  The  jurors  scribbled 
enthusiastically.  The King sat back in his chair,  smiling broadly.  He  had 
always kinda liked the Mayor and he hadn't felt comfortable when he heard the 
Mayor  had allegedly committed such a hideous offence.  The  Virgin,  on  the 
other hand, put him ill at ease just by being here. He didn't feel bad at all 
about  her  being guilty.  Justice had been served once more,  and  he  could 
finally get down to munching that Limburg Pie that just sat on that table for 
not much of a particular reason.
 The Virgin was not intimidated by the Snake,  however, no matter how much it 
looked like lawyers generally do.  Even when the pathetic animal rose to full 
height it was hardly larger than...er...  Anyway,  she had seen bigger things 
in her life.
 "You must be out of your mind," the Virgin spoke haughtily, "I will not have 
you accuse me of anything of the sort!"
 The  crowd went through their "ooohs" and "aaahs" again,  the King moved  to 
the edge of his chair,  the imagined taste of cherry vanishing from his royal 
tongue.
 "Ssssso you deny!" Tansa cried.  If the animal would have had a  fist,  this 
would have been to moment for it to be connected to the table, with force.
 Cronos was feeling ill at ease,  just like the King.  Only with Warchild  it 
was caused by his overall continuous growing.  He was already getting too big 
to fit on the jury-creatures' bench any more.
 The King rose from his chair.
 "If...er...um...you  allegedly...um...er...didn't  do...er...um...  it,"  he 
said,  addressing the Virgin,  "that is to say, er...um... bringing Ted, then 
who...er...um...has?"
 "Most...er...loathsomely  so,  Your...um...Divinity!" the  Weasel  concorded 
quietly  so as not to disturb amazement and wonder,  which both hung  in  the 
sky, chatting leisuredly while waiting for the outcome.
 Without  thinking  twice the Virgin looked Cronos Warchild straight  in  the 
eyes.  He  suddenly felt some part of his body was perhaps  growing  slightly 
quicker than the rest of it.
 "Him!" she cried, affecting emotion and tears, "that big lummox over there!"
 She  sniggered  and snorted derisively,  slowly pointing her  virginal  hand 
towards Cronos Warchild. When she was positive all the court now gazed in awe 
at the mercenary annex hired gun, she stepped down and left the court.
 Amazement and wonder decided to stay for a while longer.

                            X - CRONOS' INNOCENCE

 Warchild arose, startled, tossing over most of the jurors' benches as he had 
already grown larger, almost up to his natural size. The creatures fell over. 
Deja  vu struck Cronos mercilessly,  upon which he frenetically tried to  put 
all the animals and birds back on their benches for fear of treading on them. 
His  first kill had been his foster mother's cat,  which he had reduced to  a 
flat mass of blood and gore by inadvertently lowering his rear end on it.  He 
didn't  like  to  think back of it,  nor did he like to  have  things  repeat 
themselves.  As far as repition was concerned,  everything that had  happened 
underground had already been, somehow, uncannily familiar.
 "What do you know about thisssss busssssinesssss?" Tansa asked, attempting a 
hypnotic stare on Cronos that bounced back off and made it feel sleepy for an 
instant.
 "Nothing whatever," Warchild said firmly.  He might have been dimwitted, but 
he had a great sense of justice.  In his views the guilty had to die horrible 
deaths,  preferably  by  his hands,  and the innocent needed to go  free  and 
generally  live  long and happy everafter.  As he could not  imagine  killing 
himself  he logically concluded he had to be innocent of whatever  ridiculous 
charge  was  made  against  him.  Besides,  he knew  nothing  of  any  Skunks 
whatsoever, except maybe for once having kicked one.
 If Tansa would have had a brow,  it would have frowned it.  If it would have 
had hands and hair, it would have put its first in its latter.
 Rather unannounced, the King suddenly sprang up from his chair.
 "Silence!",  he yelled at the top of his royal voice,  the Weasel's  frantic 
agreement  lost  in the noise.  The King took a leather-bound tome  from  the 
table, opened it and read, "Rule forty-two: All persons more than a mile high 
have to leave the court."
 All  eyes (some of which were on stalks) immediately turned at  Cronos,  who 
suddenly  felt stage fright homing in on his subconsciousness  at  positively 
awesome speed.
 "Peremptorily so, Your Multiformness," Cat added after a while, which it had 
spent stunned at the King's suddenness.
 "No way," Cronos said.
 "Way," the King replied.
 "Yesssss way," the Snake lawyer added superfluously.
 "Two miles," the Hyena spoke.
 "I  don't care a pair of fetid dingo kidneys," Warchild  said,  folding  his 
arms demonstratively.  One of the members of the audience uttered an insulted 
bark.
 The White Kangaroo was the first to send silence to the  hospital.  "There's 
more evidence to come yet,  Your Majesty," it said,  "A letter written by the 
mercenary  annex  hired gun and addressed to Ted the Skunk,  as a  matter  of 
fact."
 Of  course  Cronos was as little able to read and write as  politicians  are 
able  to  talk  honest sense - so it was quite out of the  question  that  he 
should have written that letter, or whatever it was.
 "What'sssss in it?" Tansa asked with the inquisition so familiar to lawyers.
 "Dunno," the Kangaroo said, fumbling its trumpet's mouthpiece lamely, "there 
is nothing written on the outside."
 "It  has to be written to someone," the Hyena remarked smartly,  "it  rarely 
occurs that letters are written to no-one, you know."
 "Open it," the King commanded.
 "Mandatorily so, Your Slovenliness," the Weasel enthused.
 The  White  Kangaroo solemnly opened the envelope and took out  a  piece  of 
paper.  Even  most  jurors started to doubt whether it had  been  written  by 
Warchild when it was proclaimed to contain only poetry.
 "It  doesssss not look like the mersssssenary'sssss handwriting," the  Snake 
said,  unable  to  bar  disappointment from entering  its  voice.  The  jury-
creatures looked at each other, not quite knowing what to make of this.
 "He must have faked another person's handwriting!" the Hyena remarked, smart 
as ever. The jurors smiled happily, scribbling down something.
 "Cod's  Wallop!"  Cronos cried,  rising to his feet whereby he  tossed  most 
jurors off their benches again,  "and I am sick and tired of all  this.  Ever 
since  I came here nobody liked me!  Ever since I arrived here everybody  has 
been very nasty to me, and now you're trying to sentence me, or something!"
 He breathed in deeply.
 "Mummy!!" he cried, sobbing, shoulders shaking.
 The sheer power of his voice moved the tables,  let the Limburg Pie dash off 
with its proverbial tail between its metaphorical legs and caused most of the 
creatures  present to land on the ground spreadeagled,  prostrate,  or  both. 
Even the King found himself on the ground, his royal arse in the air.
 Some  Old  Wonders of the World came running  into  the  courtroom.  Numbers 
floated through the air. Colourless green ideas started sleeping furiously.
 "Order!" the King yelled.
 "Mummy!!" Cronos howled.

 Warchild  found  himself screaming into an empty  street.  He  was  wet;  it 
appeared to have rained.  Dusk had fallen.  The moon and stars looked at  the 
mercenary annex hired gun mutely, seemingly intent on remaining that way.
 As  Cronos  was not trained to think but to fight  instead,  the  difference 
between dream and reality was altogether rather vague to him. He wondered how 
he came back on that bank,  and he also wondered what had become of the  bozo 
that seemed to have done a pretty good job at going off somewhere.
 Warchild felt his pockets. A curse rolled off his lips.
 His American Express Travellers' Cheques had been nicked again.

                                   THE END

 Original written July to September 1992.  And I'm very sorry about the (lack 
of an) equivalent of the "Lobster Quadrille". I figured if I didn't even know 
what a quadrille was, I should leave it be.


= SOON COMING ===============================================================


 The next issue of "Twilight World", Volume 3 Issue 5, is to be released mid 
September  1995.  Please  refer to the  'subscription'  section,  below,  for 
details on getting it automatically, in case you're interested.
 Please refer to the section on 'submissions', below, for more details on 
submitting your own material.
 The next issue will probably contain the following items...

 WILD HORSES
 by Mark Knapp

 FATAL FAM
 by Martijn Wiedijk

 AND MORE


= SOME GENERAL REMARKS ======================================================


 DESCRIPTION

 "Twilight World" is an on-line magazine aimed at everybody who is interested 
in any sort of fiction - although it usually tends to concentrate on fantasy-
and science-fiction, often with a bit of humour thrown in.
 Its  main source is an Atari ST/TT/Falcon disk magazine by the name  of  "ST 
NEWS" which publishes computer-related articles as well as fiction. "Twilight 
World"  mostly consists of fiction featured in "ST NEWS" so far,  with  added 
stories submitted by "Twilight World" readers.

 SUBMISSIONS

 If you've written some good fiction and you wouldn't mind it being published 
world-wide,  you can mail it to me either electronically or by standard mail. 
At all times do I reserve the right not to publish submissions.  Do note that 
submissions  on disk will have to use the MS-DOS or Atari  ST/TT/Falcon  disk 
format on 3.5" Double-or High-Density floppy disk.  Provided sufficient  IRCs 
are  supplied  (see below),  you will get your disk back with  the  issue  of 
"Twilight World" on it that features your fiction. Electronic submittees will 
get an electronic subscription if so requested.
 At all times, please submit straight ASCII texts without any special control 
codes whatsoever, nor right justify or ASCII characters above 128. Please use 
*asterisks* to emphasise text if needed, start each paragraph with one space, 
don't include empty lines between each paragraph and use "-" instead of "--". 
Also remember the difference between possessives and contractions,  only  use 
multiple  question marks when absolutely necessary (!!) and never  use  other 
than one (.) or three (...) periods in sequence.

 COPYRIGHT

 Unless  specified along with the individual stories,  all  "Twilight  World" 
stories are copyrighted by the individual authors but may be spread wholly or 
separately  to  any  place - and indeed into any other  magazine  -  provided 
credit is given both to the original author and "Twilight World".

 CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESS

 I prefer electronic correspondence,  but regular stuff (such as  postcards!) 
can  be sent to my regular address.  If you expect a reply please supply  one 
International Reply Coupon (available at your post office), *two* if you live 
outside Europe.  If you want your disk(s) returned, add 2 International Reply 
Coupons per disk (and one extra if you live outside  Europe).  Correspondence 
failing these guidelines will be read (and perused) but not replied to.
 The address:

 Richard Karsmakers
 P.O. Box 67
 NL-3500 AB Utrecht
 The Netherlands

 Email r.c.karsmakers@stud.let.ruu.nl
 (This should be valid up to the summer of 1996)

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your subscription terminates.
 Back  issues of "Twilight World" may be FTP'd  from  atari.archive.umich.edu 
and etext.archive.umich.edu.  It is also posted to rec.arts.prose,  alt.zines 
and  alt.prose  and is on Gopher somewhere as well.  Thanks to Gard  for  all 
this! A URL you might try is http://arrogant.itcl.icl.ie/TwilightZone/

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 If  you like "Twilight World",  a spontaneous burst of philantropy aimed  at 
the  postal address mentioned above would be very  much  appreciated!  Please 
send cash only;  any regular currency will do.  Apart from keeping  "Twilight 
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student  of  English at Utrecht University.  If  donations  reach  sufficient 
height  they will secure the existence of "Twilight World" after  my  studies 
have been concluded. If not...then all I can do is hope for the best.
 Thanks!

 DISCLAIMER

 All authors are responsible for the views they express. Also, The individual 
authors are the ones you should sue in case of copyright infringements!

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 EOF