|| -------- -- -----  A E R I E   O B L I V I A N A . singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora ------------------- ----------- FRIEND IS TAR MONORAIL--CUP 6--"J. R. R. TOLKIEN" <-------  ||  Severe Repair  ||  Friend is Tar Monorail  ||  -------> (Cup SRft006, Created v2 (6/7/99), Copyright 1999) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = "Where do you think we are, anyway?" Fred said after a period of silence. Alva stared at him, and furrowed his brow, fully taking in, for the first time, the weird appearance of the bizarre Fred. "You really aren't like anyone I've ever seen before. No offense, but you're a weird one." Alva said. Fred looked a little hurt, but then he smiled. "I told you that I'm a lame character made up by a bunch of '80s losers. That's just what I am." Alva looked away and nodded. Then suddenly it got dark and there was a huge black circle in the sky, many times the diameter of the sun that it blocked. There was a halo of light around it, like in a regular solar eclipse, but the light was very faint. Alva saw the black circle right away, but Fred was looking around frantically before he caught sight of it. "Now willya look at that!" Fred said. "That's not something you see every day, as Tom would say." Then a face appeared in the circle. A beatiful girl with high cheekbones, a blond Mohawk, and a killer stare. She was looking right at Fred and Alva. Her eyes narrowed and anger flared in her expression. "FUCK!" she yelled in great frustration, and it shook Fred and Alva to their bones. Before the vibrations of the obscenity were finished, the black circle disappeared and it was sunny again. Fred and Alva stared at each other, at a loss for words. "Um..." Fred finally said. Alva started shaking his head. "That was interesting!" Fred said, his voice trembling a little. Alva just kept shaking his head. Later... "Alva, did you ever hear of a game called 'Dungeons & Dragons'?" asked Fred. "No." said Alva. "Oh, well, it's really a wonderful sort of game. My friends used to play it all the time. They even incorporated me into it sometimes." "Yeah?" The two had been walking down the Sahatter Elevated Walkway for some time now. After they saw the woman's face in the sky, Fred had suggested they start walking, and Alva had blankly agreed. "'D&D', as it's called in its shortened form, is a role-playing game in which players take on the personas of medieval wizards, fighters, thieves, paladins and the like." "How do they do that?" "They have a character record sheet." "Uh-huh." "Tom said that D&D was based on 'The Lords of the Rings', a series of books by J. R. R. Tolkien." "Never heard of that." "No? You never heard of J. R. R. Tolkien? Where have you been living all these years, my man?" "I was living old and destroyed." "Old people are cool. Tom's grandfather was great. But he died." "You sure talk about Tom a lot." "Yeah! He's the guy who originally drew me!" Alva skeptically looked over the little guy. "Too bad he wasn't a better artist." Fred looked a little hurt, but then he smiled. "That's what Gamble used to say! 'Poor Fred', she'd say, 'his daddy Tom was a bad artist!'" Alva frowned and said nothing. -------> ------------------- ----------- -------- -- -----