After the picnic, Phillippo the horse costume said, “Well, what do you guys want to do next?”

Ben Garment said, “If we're to see Oopertreepia via Nesodi Iveent, there's like as not a large catapult aimed toward the latter. An entertainment-themed city like Dot-Speck-Water-Trail's bound to have at least one or six—there's no better way to see the neon lights of the strip than naked and flung airborne!”

“Dehasten a bit, Ben Garment!” said Traycup. “We must respect tradition! No picnic find its completion without a handful of ice cream. Let us away to a frothy parlor of frozen treats! That'll tide our tummies while we locate the city's egress.”

Now, Traycup was the tallest of them, and so was followed as he led the way to a bookstore, where a shoe stood outside crying, “Lament, o elder ones, for the dog sign is near!” Thus seduced, they entered the bookstore, and inquired of the proprietor the location of a treasure cache.

“Who uses cash in this day and age?” said the bookseller, presenting a sign that read CREDIT/DEBIT CARD ONLY. Quickly realizing his error, he put on a mustache and didn't have a cane. He checked to see if anyone had noticed the mistake, but no one seemed to, and so he relaxed unprofitably.

Traycup built a chair from leftover sneezing powder and said, “We'll take one of each.”

“Make mine with rice,” said Ben Garment. “The oil exports haven't been sitting right with me lately.”

“Alas,” said Traycup, “poor Ben Garment. Very well. One of each, and one of each with rice.”

“The bill for that,” said the bookseller, “comes to—two dollars. Two whole dollars.”

“What! Such wealth! Well, we are undone,” Traycup lamented. “Now, we must take flight—farewell, bookman!”

So Traycup and Ben Garment, Mario the gondolier and Phillippo the horse costume, and lastly Roby, who was reluctant and still considering the profundity of the words demonstrated by the cadre of books, all fled into a mouse hole. Within the mouse hole they met the King of Mice, Garbaon Eternalis, who had a new paper crown and a long list of chores, and they each took a share of the chores and voyaged hither and yon throughout the mouse kingdom, having many merry adventures and many more frightful ones, until at last the list had been done and they had earned the friendship and loyalty of King Eternalis and all the mice of the mouse kingdom, and they finally emerged through a crack in the wall, each bearing a commemorative petrified duck's foot.

“A kindly mouse-friend,” said Roby, “and kingly, as well. Almost a pity it is to be quitting that fair land so soon! Well, back to the city, for now it is fitting to get our travel en route.”

“But, we're not closer to the ice cream!” said Phillippo.

“It's so,” said Traycup in dread. “It's probably extinct by now, or at least on the endangered species list.”

They were all saddened at the end of ice cream as they knew it, and nearly resigned themselves to a bacon bits-themed dessert menu, but then someone named Pilpug came up to them and said, “You kids want to buy some hockey cards?” Just the lead they were looking for!

“I've a suite myself,” said Ben Garment, “I've been trying to offload on someone for an age!”

“Then we're met,” said Pilpug. “Let's set your set against mine and see how they seem.”

So, they called a carpenter to craft a fine antique footstool for them, and they all sat on that and laid out their hockey cards on the back of an ox, and Pilpug and Ben Garment pointed to ones from one another's collection and said names and numbers, none of which anyone understood, so all the ununderstanders went to challenge a gang of mailboxes to a hopscotch match—the mailboxes couldn't make it, though, because that was their hot yoga day. But they hadn't long to wait, anyway, for after only a few weeks, Pilpug and Ben Garment came back to them with an announcement.

“A deal is done!” said Ben Garment. “Gaze!” He brandished a money sack, a suspiciously relevant item. “Pilpug made a purchase of my collection. To a collector, they are indeed worthless—one hundred thousand identical cards, all pulled from the same pack one spring morn! However, to a historical statistician, each card is a unique physical object—a novel instance of an otherwise typical class of item. Each had traced a path unakin to any other, and bore its wounds and wear to tell its life. From these marks of damage, Pilpug can reconstruct the chain of events stretching pastwards, and concoct all of history from the tale they bear. I got seven dollars for the lot!”

“Enough ice cream funds to last a lifetime!” said Phillippo.

“Surely,” said Traycup, “extinction is undone with such assets!”

A canoe came by, and Phillippo got on first, spurred on by the excitement of ice cream. Roby followed and then Traycup, and then Mario the gondolier and finally Ben Garment, lugging the mighty money sack.

“Driver,” said Traycup, “onward to the extremities, if you please!”

The driver wasn't there and so didn't say anything. In acceptance, Traycup took the wheel and floored it, and the canoe went up the road so fast that everything on both sides of them was but a blur. Fortunately, for narrative purposes, the road was straight, and there were no obstacles before them, and their destination was exactly one conversation away.

“Traycup,” said Roby, but before she could say anything else, Traycup interrupted her.

“Roby! We're friended, and good friends now, so don't have a worry—upon the finality of ice cream, we will determine the rightful route to the city of the Roby-mom, and there shall be a visit, as promised long ago!”

“That is well!” said Roby. “For as you tell, you are for Oopertreepia, and though I was pleased to meet you, I shall not go so far, so I fear we must soonly part.”

“Fearn't! I'll to join your mother's birthday celebration, and not leave a greeting ungiven.”

“What!” said Ben Garment. “What've you said? Birthday? And so—a birthday party? Traycup, you really are a capitalized fool!”

“Well, Ben!” said Traycup. “This is news. What's it?”

“Going to Oopertreepia—after a birthday party! Oh, woe is us. That is the rule of Oopertreepia: after a birthday party, the city will be gone entirely!”

“Of course!” said Traycup in tragic alarm. “I've only just learned it, but I should've known all along. Well, this is a real dilemma, then.”

“If the mission of you is important, you must always remain going forward,” said Roby. “With time on your side, I dearly confide, you might make a stay at the special birthday, but with time running out we shall go without the company of you and try next time, too.”

“Let's stow this quitter's talk!” said Traycup. “We've had a journey together, so we'll finish it the same! There's no telling when your mother might have another birthday! We've to take advantage of this chance while we've it!”

“Then we've hastened for naught!” said Ben Garment gloomily. “Alas, so much for Oopertreepia!”

“Grieve not over my little mission,” said Traycup. “I'm sure they've a drop-off box or something akin.”

“Alas for your mission,” said Ben Garment, “and mine as well! Bereft of blimp and crew, I'm stuck in my spot 'til I can restore the balance a bit! And call me free of the commissar's purse at last—but shall I look at a dog-watcher or a buy a hexagonal pebble? Nay, I've a fantasy bigger than that!”

“Take heart, good Ben!” said Phillippo. “You've got Mario still!”

“He doesn't work for me,” said Ben Garment.

“Gerrymandering,” explained Mario. “The gondola's in a different state. I've got a ZIP code all to myself.”

“Put down one foot b'fore lifting the next!” said Traycup. “Here, this spot's either got ice cream or catapults—behold, the parsnip's in a frenzy!”

The parsnip was going into conniptions as the canoe pulled up at the dishwasher's place, a tiny apartment on a tiny street lost somewhere in the middle of the city. Well, not the middle middle, more like “middle of nowhere” kind of middle, except this was the middle of everywhere, and tall and narrow buildings crowded the roads, which were empty but for the mess—derelict bicycles and long-rusted cars, odd crates and boxes here and there, all lit by just one feeble lamp that was doing its best.

“I really am,” said the lamp.

“That's the,” said Traycup, “spirit! Keep it up!”

The lamp tried a little harder, but this was a dark and miserable corner of the city, and no amount of incandescent illumination could bring light to it, except for a real lot.

“This spot lacks humor,” said Mario. “That likely rules out ice cream.”

“Catapults it is, then,” said Ben Garment.

“Alas for traditions!” said Traycup.

They approached the door to the dishwasher's room in trepidation, all crowded together, for the way was narrow and dark, the silence of the street belied hidden watchers, the buildings about them young with age but old with neglect and abuse, and it all together gave them great fear, and when Traycup reached up and knocked on the door, it broke a spell of quietude that had lain all about them for a hundred years, perhaps, or at least since the stuff they said ten seconds ago.

Slowly, with a metallic creaking, the door opened wide, and the dishwasher was there. Just sitting there, like a big appliance. It wasn't even plugged in.

“Oh,” said Phillippo. He leaned over the dishwasher in admiration, gazing at its fine cape of sheet metal. “I thought the top would be, y'know, just open? And the pipes and stuff would just be there, since they always go under a counter so you never see it anyway.”

“Maybe you never see it,” said Mario.

“Well, I eat out a lot,” said Phillippo.

“What dishes I dirty,” said Ben Garment, “I just put through the garbage disposal.”

Traycup held a torch aloft, and gazed into the darkened apartment. “Let's press onward,” he said. “Every mystery's a solution, so we've to find it!” But as soon as Traycup was inside, he fell into a trap, and sixteen beetles imprisoned him in a pool noodle, before turning their bison burgers on the others.

“Be feared!” chimed the beetles, rigging an election. “We've got the goods, and the goods're great!”

Mario the gondolier threw two textbooks and said, “Stay back! I knew you were all too soft! Let's not be too done for, here! Remember, the more the merrier!” Mario snapped his fingers and closed the blinds, then threw down a pocketful of jacks, before revealing the answer to all the math. A nearby mathematician heard this, and came over to correct him, because he was entirely wrong about everything.

“Oh, ho! Quite good!” said the beetles. “But—check this out!” They all wore a diving bell, and plumbed the depths of the ocean, where they found something that looked like the ruins of an ancient civilization—or rocks, but that was less interesting—and they took blurry, out-of-focus photographs, and produced a documentary with intentionally misleading observations, glaring factual omissions, and an overall tone meant to suggest to the viewer a merchandise-selling narrative.

Now, while this was happening, Ben Garment and Phillippo stayed well back from the carnage, for they were bored. Phillippo started cold-calling widows and asking for ice cream—none had even heard of the stuff. It doesn't do to stay too fixated for long, so Ben Garment was looking at blueprints for an airport, but they didn't tell him what he wanted to hear, so he put them in the “suspicious” pile.

Mario was alone, but not outdone—not yet. He thumbed his nose and kneed his ear, and said, “Oh, fellows, they don't make oysters anymore, and I think you should know a stamp like that is pretty rare around here!” He threw a pillowcase into the blender and they were soon to be wed—the pillowcase and the blender, not Mario, he's already married to the gondolier life—and then Roby ate one of the beetles.

“Hey!” said fifteen of the beetles.

“I am sorry!” said Roby. “It seemed a necessity, and nice to see, you see, and I saw an opportunity that seemed to me to be an invitation toward communication—a friendship new, so to speak.” She was aiming for the bison burger, but decided that was better left unsaid.

“It is a grave faux pas!” said fifteen of the beetles. “It is past grave, and surely of a foe!” But Roby felt that it was no faux pas, and no foe paused, and such claims were a ruse so as to generate a false sympathy for the antagonists after their bullying resulting in their own beating. And then Roby ate another beetle. This time it was on purpose. It turned out they were delicious.

“Lest we meet the lass's stomach-juices,” said fourteen of the beetles, “let's hit the trail!” The beetles knew when they were licked, and when they were bit, and, yearning for neither, they mounted their horses and rode off into the metaphorical sunset.

“Well, that's that,” said Mario. He glanced at Roby, but didn't say anything. Ben Garment and Phillippo came back, utterly empty-handed from their efforts, notwithstanding the fact that they did not have hands.

Roby ran and released Traycup from the pool noodle by untying the velvet knot in the center of the orchid garden. He was none the worse for the wear from the taking, but a bit abashed.

“My guard's let me down,” said Traycup, rubbing a kidney, “and vice versa to boot!”

“Appliances like that,” said Mario, “can be incredibly unpredictable. It's as well that we acted fast.”

With more care, they all explored deeper into the depths of the dishwasher's apartment. They saw a pile of vintage shot glasses, all labeled “Hoboken 1858;” three leopards in a suit performing some old poetry from Garlic Hamstein, the great candle maker from Podoliver; and a detuned painting swinging in the summer breeze. But the group was older and wiser now, and avoided all these traps, taking nothing but photographs and leaving nothing but footprints. In the back of the apartment, they found a jukebox.

“A jukebox!” said Phillippo. “I've heard of these! There's ice cream aplenty inside, or so the legend goes.”

“Seems I'm petard-hoisted,” said Mario. “Well, color me with a pencil!”

“But, how're we to bypass its gate?” said Ben Garment.

Traycup went up to the jukebox and opened its front door.

“It's lockn't,” he said.

They went inside.