“Look out!” said Student #417, pointing into the sky. Roby, Ben Garment, and all the bees looked up at what she was pointing at—but there was nothing there.

“It seems there is no thing to see up there,” said Roby. “Though I squint, not a hint of a thing anywhere!”

Ben Garment raised a fin to shade his eyes from the glowing light of the sun. “Yeah, I don't see anything either.”

The bees all looked up and down and all around, and they, too, didn't see anything, and so they said, “We see nothing—and so sense a trick! This transgression of trust shall result in death! And not ours, thankfully!”

“No! Wait! I swear—there was something there!” Student #417 ran to and fro, fretting, and all sorts of worked up, and added, “I'm sure I saw something! Look again—but only the bees this time!”

They looked again, each in a different direction, to see if they saw something, but no one saw anything, and soon became tired of looking at things, so they sat down and closed their eyes and listened to things instead, and all they heard was Mr. Miller working on building that dog park across the street. He had been building it for two years, and when he finished, people would finally be able to park their dogs when they went shopping, but as it stood now there was nowhere to park your dog so you had to take it with you when you went shopping, which meant whenever they gave out free samples, they'd have to give one to the dog, too, and someone would have to come by and cut down the portions to dog-sized, and the portion-cutter wasn't always available and there was usually a wait—anyway, the way things were right now was really inconvenient, is the point, and we're all waiting eagerly for Mr. Miller to finish.

“I still don't see anything,” said Ben Garment, while Student #417 checked the notes she didn't take to find out why Plan A didn't work.

“Hmph!” said the bees. “More foibles and trickitries! Well, we've had enough! It's time we showed you the power of our mighty guns! And also, our other mighty GUNZ!”

The bees divided into three platoons, and each platoon encircled one of Student #417, Ben Garment, and Roby, and all the bees still had their machine guns and also their metaphorical guns. The student-teacher conference was unarmed except for their literal arms, but they were unskilled in the way of unarmed combating, and also generally unkempt. It seemed like there was no hope—or, perhaps it didn't. Art is subject to interpretation, after all, and it might defeat the purpose if I just told you how things quote-unquote “seem.” Or maybe that's the point. Sometimes it's hard to know.

Ben Garment was no fighter at all, and Student #417 had a marshmallow brain. Roby thought about what Traycup would do, and it seemed he would try to do something. Roby was no great trier, but Traycup was, and now it would not do to not do something.

“You, bees!” said Roby. “You have the guns, and you have the GUNZ, but consider to have instead: to depart, or take part, or take apart a part of something furthering fun!” She proffered the coffee maker, and the bees regarded it with uncertainty, and they checked their calendars, and it seemed they could squeeze it in, and squeeze into it, since the coffee maker had some kind of mechanical problem, and so by wriggling inside with their little carapaces, they diagnosed the problem as a missing spring, which was true, as the winter lingered long and the summer soon approached, the changing climate forced spring into a corner, but not crammed claustrophobically by the towering parlor walls, but the corner of a cliff that overlooked a dizzying fall, and by the time the bees realized there was nothing wrong with the coffee maker after all, Roby and Ben Garment had already gone, dragging Student #417 with them, because she couldn't take a hint, which was probably for the best, since stealing is wrong.

Don't tell the bees, but the three of them hid at an unlisted bookstore. The bookstore was very tiny, and had tall white walls. Once-white, anyway. Time does a number to unattended places like this. The storefront was a single pane of floor-to-ceiling window, awkwardly narrow. The glass door was next to it, and on the adjacent wall there were several windows but it was all blocked up by some empty displays, and the shades were pulled down anyway. There was a counter where all the glass was long gone and replaced by aged plywood, most of which had warped and rotted and fallen from the brackets. A couple shelves were behind that, mounted on that grid, pegboard stuff like in the garage, and the shelves were bare and one was crooked. In the corner was a door to The Back Room, like stores always have. A ceiling fan spun weakly and the light bulb flickered.

I mean... uh... not that—nope, not that at all! Actually, there were at a, let's say, giant granite disc carved with the runes of ancient giraffes and spinning at a thousand miles per hour, powered by jambalaya cookouts and named Tedsteve. How's that?

Whew, that was close, almost gave away the ending.

“The bees are quite dislocated,” said Ben Garment.

“All but one,” said Roby, but Roby didn't say it—it was a little voice that came from her coat, or rather, from Traycup's coat, which she'd swapped with him so long ago. From the pocket of Roby's Traycup's coat came the voice and it's owner—the bee named Lorenzo.

“A stealther!” said Ben Garment. “It'll sound the alarm! Quickly—inform all and sundry that this day is alarm-testing day, and any alarms rung should be ignored.”

“I know that!” said Student #417. “Everyone knows that! That's an urban legend—they say that every year! The alarm never rings!”

“This bee of me,” said Roby, “is one without guns or GUNZ and so is not one of those ones but another one! Bee, say the name of you and we can be friended, and then an escape by us can be attended.”

“I am Lorenzo,” said Lorenzo, “and I am a free bee—indeed, shattered from shackles long ago, and long lost. I have lain in Traycup's pocket, but, through the greatness of your teachings, I have learned all the words, and now have learned to speak for myself—the true voice of a bee!”

Roby and Ben Garment were very proud, and they decided to hold a graduation ceremony there in the bookstore—I mean, there on the granite disc. But no one wanted a big ceremony, so they just went to the courthouse to get sworn at by a judge who called them a bunch of ugly—well, I don't want to put it in writing. And it'll sound worse if left unsaid, so fill in your own blanks. Just assume the worst. Anyway, everyone agreed Lorenzo had graduated with the highest of honors: at all.

“So! So!” said Student #417. “This makes me salutatorian. Second place! Silver medal! I'll take it!”

“You haven't graduated yet,” said Lorenzo.

“I'll take it,” said Student #417.

“We'll deal with your tutelage later—and your thieving ways,” said Lorenzo. “As you all must guess, I shall soon return to my people. I know—as an unruly lot, they have attacked you, and made waste of your home. Roby, by the way—I suggest you cease trying to own a home or business, be partnered in such a venture, or visit family who does. It seems to end poorly.”

Roby wasn't talking to the unlisted bookstore owner about buying the unlisted bookstore—because they weren't there, they were on a giant granite disc, right? You all remember the giant granite disc, don't you? “That idea shall see consideration by me,” said Roby.

Lorenzo rolled his segmented eyes somehow. “My point is, I know the bees have been threatening, but let me speak to them. I can resolve this situation without violence.”

Ben Garment said, “We are at a great loss now, due to wreckage and menace caused by the bee flock!”

“All can be made right,” said Lorenzo, “in time. First, give me a chance to quell simmering attitudes.”

“This is an idea,” said Roby, “with a danger measured at greatness! These bees see rage blazing unabated, embracing hatred, and will chase us for ages! We must trust we will be crushed to dust if they touch us!”

“Such is the way of the bees,” said Lorenzo.

“If we want to talk to 'em,” said Student #417, exercising her salutatorial status and her volumetric knowledge gained in the day of her schooling, “we'll need three good razor blades and much, much longer feet!”

“Nay!” said Lorenzo. “That is an old-fashioned methodology. It isn't necessary. There are better ways these days—we can simply use a cattail, or a biplane, or a few good gyros.”

“A clever update,” said Ben Garment, “and a novel catastrophe: you see, none of these are had-things. You paint us as creeked up as can be!”

But there was a further creek up which to be, as it soon transpired thusly: that giant granite disc carved with runes and spinning? Well, turns out it wasn't some random nonsense I made up for no reason, but actually it was a giant record, and the giant Dubious Miraclasm was listening to the record, grew tired of it, and went to pick it up—taking up our heroes with it—and then dumping them, record and all, into the sleeve, and sliding the sleeve into the album cover, and putting the album into the big safe in the basement and locking it shut. Locking the safe, I mean. But also locking the basement.

On the plus side, at least they were safe from the bees.

Okay, so, the S. S. Dripspout had circled the continent forty-eight times, and Captain A Big Sandwich Wrapped With Carpet, Limonade Simplistic, and Phil had found one another's company in the smoking lounge, and were currently embroiled in a virtuous card game.

“Are you wearing glasses?” said Captain.

“Yahtzee!” said Limonade Simplistic in glee.

Captain pulled a block of wood from the shaky tower, which dutifully fell down. “Confounded!” said Captain. “You've sunk my hospital ship!”

“A damn shame,” said Phil. “They were all wounded men on the way back from the war! Think of how many orphans it'll make!”

“They'll have mothers,” said Limonade. “That makes them mere demi-orphans. Far less threatening.”

“That's what you think,” said Phil, reracking the balls and setting up for another game. “Haven't you ever heard the tale of Mia and—”

Then the pangolin kicked in the door and leapt into the room and scared the hell out of everyone, and the smoking lounge coughed and spit out its cigarette, becoming a normal lounge, and the broadsword and the shotgun were there, and they all had eyepatches on.

“It's adventure 'pon the high seas!” said the pangolin. “And by adventure I mean we're robbin' ya! Cough up your watches and shoelaces—and knock off the coughing!”

All the cruisers went into a tizzy, and the shotgun passed a bucket around, in which the neophyte captives were meant to deposit their fancy wristwatches and brand-name shoelaces, and even the band grudgingly stopped playing and went and unspooled their long shoes—but in an act of defiance, they grabbed a chainsaw and sawed all their feet down the middle, splitting their shoelaces into fragment upon fragment, and, unagletted, those once-fine laces frayed most unceremoniously.

“Think you're a bunch of wise guys, eh?” said the broadsword. The band thought they were wise guys, yes, but the broadsword didn't take kindly to positive self-images today, and so stank to high heaven, and tricked the band into signing up for a new phone plan that allowed seven dentists access to their call history, and so the dentists added up all the phone numbers they had ever called, and then called that final and highest number, and put it on speakerphone, whereupon the underwater squidpeople of the damnable abyss shrieked in a obituarial harmony that turned all the band members into rapidly dehydrating polyps attached to table tennis paddles and made of really cheap wax.

The broadsword put the table tennis paddles up for auction. “Anyone else want to try something?” it said with two sneers and a smirk.

No one else wanted to try anything. The piratical pangolin and its weapony crew got a real good haul of shoelaces that day, and booked it from the lounge—remember when people said “book it” like that?—and they made it as far as the forward breakfast nook when someone suddenly said, with unexaggerated pronunciation, “Don't you think you're elongated enough?”

The pangolin skidded to a halt and whirled around.

“You!” it said in alarm, unaware that today was alarm-testing day. “But how?”

Ultrasymbolic Unitasker smiled a smiley smile and took off his detective hat. “How else?”