“We need,” said Jum Burie, “a more useful method of ascertaining his location.” She was tired—too tired to be frustrated. She stood upon a bus, or rather, the dead body of a bus, bobbing morbidly in the ocean. It looked to have been bitten three thousand times by a shark, or perhaps once by three thousand sharks. “Better yet, his destination. It's not Oopertreepia. This is the wrong direction entirely.”

Tuberlone was with her—of course—and it had a map in one hand and a newspaper in the other, crosschecking the traffic reports with oceanographic surveys, and at last declared, “The wave ended here.”

“Obviously,” said Jum Burie. “So where is he now?”

“Good question,” said Tuberlone. “Let's ask the locals. That's worked so far.”

“Fine.”

Tuberlone slapped the surface of the water with a frying pan, emitting a shockwave that emanated outward, a signal to all and sundry that may have cause to heed it. Shortly it was answered when a shark's fin emerged and began to circle the bus, and then two shark fins, and then ten, and then a hundred, and then a thousand, and then two thousand, but no more—one of the three thousand sharks from before got called in to work, and the other nine hundred and ninety-nine unaccounted for were slain by the bus, before it was slewn in turn.

Hector, still the leader of the sharks, now bearing new scars and comically mummyesque bandages, said, “Wing wang wajumbo! Fing fang facundo! Behold our handiwork in the ended bus! For that was merely a warm-up, and now we're plenty hot and raring for more!”

“Tell us the place the bus's passengers went and are,” said Jum Burie, “and quickly.”

But the sharks were in a frenzy, a rage, and their best new shoes. The idea of talking was not of them, you might say. Well, you probably wouldn't say that—Roby might, that's her style—and besides, you probably wouldn't expect sharks to be talkable in the first place. But forget talking—they weren't even in a listening mood.

“Quickly is as does!” said Hector. “Now, have a jab and a stab and years of heartbreak, won't you?” Now the sharks swam this way, and now they swam that way, and they each had a sword and a spear and an axe, and they reared up like warriors, and the sun glinted on their shiny skin, and the water ran down their skin in little rivulets, and they roared like beasts of old, and came to Jum Burie in a great charge, encircled her, and closed in on her in rings, so that she had no escape.

The sun did not shine on Jum Burie, but she had hair of gold and her eyes were pitch-black, and she stood taller than them, taller than they could ever reach, and she raised up all of her hands and said, “You, begotten of the deep, lying at the deepest depths, liars of the deepest depths; you pale forms before me, traitors to hope, and sad misfires of destiny, listen now—your time is overspent, your name overspoke, you appear only as relics and myths, as useless as a dream, as devout as babes.”

In the fields, the farmers began to take in the harvest. Backbreaking work, they dreaded the labor, yet cherished it, for it was through this effort that sustenance would be won—no fools they, not a complaint was uttered, and they put all their strength to the chore, and made it done. And so it came to be that afterwards, when the work was complete, they gathered in celebration, and toasted to their success, and praised one another's virtue, and basked in the light that shone from tomorrow. No one spoke their secret, but let it lie, and stepped upon it on the path homeward.

And now all the sharks were dead—except for that one that had to go to work, so he was going to be in for a surprise when he got back—and Jum Burie went around and gathered up all their brains, and ground them down into dust, and baked the dust into bread to eat, and buttered the bread amply, and when she ate it she gained all their memories and all their feelings—what few they had.

“They climbed this ladder,” said Jum Burie, as she began to climb the nearby ladder.

“Oh, well,” said Tuberlone, “I suppose that seems obvious in retrospect.”

One jukebox later, Traycup and Roby and all of them were all outside and each enjoying a double-scoop ice cream cone. It turned out that after the seventh floor, with the goblin kingdom and the knocked-over fire hydrant, there was indeed the ice cream parlor! That parsnip would never betray them. They all got normal flavors, too, so there's no point in imagining something silly like grass, or the sound of rain beginning on a lonely night, or a camper broken down on Four Ninety-Five on the way to the Cape, or any parts of any synapsid fossil, or a half-nelson. It's also pointless to try to match up who got what flavor, because they didn't get those flavors, because that would be silly.

“A task fully buried,” said Roby, “so let us no longer tarry! We must find a way where we walk winding woods, or ride a rail right around the roads roundabout the town, and how about if we found out a route now departing, destination: the party, costing less than a farthing, and skipping a thing that they all call foolhardy!”

“Well, swimming's out,” said Phillippo. “Can't go in the water for an hour after eating!”

“Only counts for meals,” said Mario. “Dessert's not a full meal. You're good.”

Now, nearby was a church, and since it was bingo time, there was a big crowd gathered around it, all eager to learn the rules to the game, finally. In true tragic form, there was no teacher registered who could perform the necessary acrobatics to convey the true meaning of bingo, and so they began to have a riotous game of charades—classic style, taking too long, involving a lot of props, and even worse, everyone only got one guess. They all wasted it guessing the same thing: a too-short fork leftover from the era of the old kings.

“Now, here's a spot of fools,” said Bolton, as he parted from the crowd and spotted Traycup and his friends, obvious outsiders that they were. Bolton offered them some discount high heels and conversation. “This is why we can't have nice things,” he said potentially to himself. “You get a little californium in your corn flakes, and everyone takes a week off to rename poultry!”

“A task I know all too well,” said Traycup. “Say, we're to be absconders—where's a volcano at, could you say?”

“Ah, y'all headed for Nesodi Iveent?” said Bolton. “At this hour, you'd never get a ticket. What you need is a stalwart and loyal cowboy—he can up and throw a lasso 'round the whole city, drag it in for ya. Right up to your feet. Works every time.” Bolton tried to wink, but failed, and would have to repeat the second grade.

“That's some advice we can take to the brain,” said Ben Garment.

“Here's more,” said Bolton. “Put up a wall before the wind makes itself at home!” He laughed a little and then went home to watch the wheat be. No one would ever believe him if he told them where he had been today.

“It seems we've got more than too many options,” said Mario.

“Not as such!” said Traycup. “For, look there!”

“The church?” said Mario.

“A little to the left,” said Traycup.

“Why, that's a science factory!”

“You've made a guess!” said Traycup. “Therein is the machine that makes platypi and platypuses, and there's no faster route to take than that, if we can get one a little tipsy! Let's parachute 'pon the roof and make a break'f it, and see if there's bits and bytes enough for all!”

Well, getting parachutes would be a whole nother wrinkle, of course, so they went to the coliseum, which Dot-Speck-Water-Trail naturally had, but they were sold out. That's when Frank Tacklebox, the centaur prince, arrived. He didn't like where this was going, so he scooped them all up in a lacrosse net and hurled them as far as he could, for Frank knew the horrors of Dot-Speck-Water-Trail, and hearing these traveler's plight in trying to get to—wherever they said, he didn't remember—he knew he couldn't let them stay here a moment longer, else they'd succumb to the bingo-crazed mania that dominates the citizenry. Frank hucked them to freedom, far from the city, out into some woods somewhere.

“My guess was as good as a rest!” said Roby with a lionless pride, after landing in a tree and falling in a pond. The others fared similarly, and extricated themselves from the bushes, tree branches, and automated vending machines that they landed in.

They flipped a coin and it told them to try hitchhiking, so they did—there are none alive who can withstand the command of almighty cash—and pretty soon a steel tiger hunter picked them up. Let's make this clear: the hunter was a steel tiger, not a tiger hunter made of steel. He hunted whatever came to mind, and this week he was after yo-yos. Did anyone still have any? Did people still buy them, for stocking-stuffers or anything? As he drove, the S. T. H. bored them with the minutiae of the eighties, and the priceless times to which he sought to return.

“I've been up and down Paltropisburg,” said the S. T. H., for example, “and seen nary a yo-yo in my entire voyage! Not even a single yo! And I'm loath to hang up my scapula.”

“We'd wish you luck,” said Traycup, “but we need to keep a piece ourselves.”

“You need to keep peace yourselves,” said the S. T. H., shifting into a more triangular gear.

“You're driving a fine tank,” said Ben Garment. “Doesn't it have a little more speed to it?”

“Only if it's chaste,” said the S. T. H.

Nearby there was a bear, emerging from a disused campsite. “Someone requested to be chased? Aye, there's a scamper I'd be proud to share!” Hopping on its moped, the bear took to the highway in pursuit of the tank. It bore a slew of nunchucks and had a pocketful of tangerines, just in case. You can visualize that however you need to, but the tangerines were unsymbolic.

The S. T. H. floored it, roofed it, then called a contractor to install brand new aluminum siding.

“Now we're learning about pickles!” laughed the S. T. H.

The tank, bear in pursuit, approached the off ramp, and they hit it at full speed, pulled a ten-eighty, and landed square on the treads, and no one even spilled their garlic bread except Roby, who was the only one who had garlic bread.

“The bread of me has become a thing of dreams,” she said wistfully.

“In-flight meals are more suited to pretzels,” said the S. T. H.

“Not peanuts?” said Phillippo.

“With modern allergy medication? Not a chance! You'd be dead before you could hit the ground!”

“Roby can't have pretzels,” said Ben Garment.

“I can have part of one, if I share with everyone,” said Roby, grinning.

“If more flipment's lying in wait, then let's wait on twisted treats!” said Traycup.

The moped pulled up next to them, and the bear leapt from it onto the tank, as bears often do, and set up a small chess tournament to which no one came, and so it declared itself the winner. The trophy was far too grand for its own tastes, and not even worth its weight in recyclable plastic. The bear took a bite from the cup—kinda gamy.

“Can't fault me for trying new things,” it said.

The S. T. H. opened the hatch and climbed onto the roof of the tank. “Are you here for the rent money? I didn't expect to meet the Inuit in this day and age! What were they saying around the light, again? Something about lettuce, probably.”

The chess tournament caught the S. T. H.'s eye.

“Well, seems I've found the right bait for a nation's eye!” The bear laughed, and left the spaghetti on the counter overnight.

“Let's be met and matched at once!” said the S. T. H.

So, the S. T. H. and the bear sat down and got to it, quickly engaging in a chess battle for the ages. They deployed pawn after pawn, knighted bishops and rooked queens, and there were no kings because they wanted to move past the age of absolute monarchies and introduce a new form of governance, one of the people, by the people, and for the people—but there was no way they could get all those pieces on the board so the kept the king but renamed him something publicly elected. Alderman, probably.

“Squire to Q-nine—with the candlestick,” said the S. T. H.

“The killing blow!” declared the bear. “You've indeed yatted my zee and made my battleship intimately familiar with the briny deep! I yield, senator.”

The bear handed over the trophy, but when the S. T. H. saw that it had been bitten, it became filled with rage, and called all its lawyers, and initiated legal proceedings at once. The police came to arrest the bear, but, since it was a bear, and merely a forest animal, and not a citizen who was bound by the criminal code of laws, there was nothing they could do. Settling the case out of court, the S. T. H. brought the tank to a stop at the Nesodi Iveent bus station, and everyone got out.

“What do we owe you?” said Traycup.

“More than you can ever pay,” said the S. T. H. “I'll be in touch.” With that, it left with the wind, as mysteriously as it had come, and everyone could smell shrimp.

“I'm out of ice cream,” said Phillippo.

Roby skipped over to the big sign that read, “YES, YOU ARE IN NESODI IVEENT.” She was so excited that she forgot to do her rhyming thing, and instead just said, “We have it made it before we are jaded, and now you can meet the mother of me at the party started in Nesodi Iveent!” Well, I guess she did rhyme, after all.

Hoglistwune and Nesodi Iveent are fine and all, but there's no place in the world like Oopertreepia. Everyone knows about it, but no one knows anything about it. Its very existence is of note, and so has to be rationed out in portions. Ben Garment is sure the city will be gone for good after the birthday party, and he's partly right, obviously, but Ben Garment doesn't know everything. Only a few people do, and one of them, right now, was dealing with things far less interesting than Oopertreepia, and merely unlocking a door. Nothing special about that. She had the only key, so clearly she was allowed. The one unusual thing about the event was that she'd never been in that house before—so why she'd have the only key to the connecting door? She didn't even have the key to the front door, but that was no obstacle, because Traycup hadn't bothered to lock it when he left.