---------------------------------------- Note 6 Jester *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 8:52 pm lynch / unidel Creeping through the halls of the castle, the jester held his jingle stick firmly in his hand to keep it from jingling and giving away his position. Far away he heard the voices of Sir John of Astonshire and the Prime minister talking. He crept into an overhang and looked down at the two. "Have ye giv'n the plans to the French?" "Aye, compleat with the map of the secret entrance. They'll have no trouble now." "King Louis said there'd be land and gold for such work. We can leave for France tonight." "Aye, best that we should. Wouldn't want us to be around when they sack the castle." "Aye." "So that's it," the jester thought, "they're going to have the French take the castle thru deceivery! King Henry will be pleased to hear of this." He crawled out of the overhang and began to run to the king's bedroom, but then paused. "Wait a minute! Since I'm a reincarnated person from the future, I should know what is SUPPOSED ---------------------------------------- Response 1 of 11 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 8:55 pm lynch / unidel to happen. Wow." He sat down in the hallway of the dank upper chambers. "I remember, back during my first life, there was this guy on 'The Twilight Zone' who went back in time and altered one little thing and BAMM all sorts of weird things happened. Hmm." He stood up and began pacing back and forth in front of King Henry's room. "Wow, what DID happen back now in history? Shit, they were right, you SHOULD learn your history for occassions like this." He thought and thought for about ten minutes, and then decided, "Oh, what the hell. Henry's a good sport, and I'd hate to have him overrun by the French," and with that, the jester walked in, told Henry, Henry mobilized his forces, readied for the attack, surprised the French and killed them all. And nothing happened. Dinosaurs didn't start appearing. Mutants didn't stalk the earth. Weird warps in history didn't occur. But, due to the fact that, in the French ambush, which was SUPPOSED to be successful,in which ---------------------------------------- Response 2 of 11 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 8:57 pm lynch / unidel Henry was to escape but in which the jester was supposed to be killed, never occured. Since the jester was not killed, the brain tumor on the left side of his cerebrum was allowed to grow even further. In a matter of days, the jester's entire cortical structure was short-circuited. Synapses began to fire in strange randomizing patterns. Perception was bent into psychotic delusion, cognitive structure abandoned logical form; however, the jester's cortical humor center was untouched. He continued jesting for Henry for two more weeks. Then one day, in a moment of giddyness, the jester began to behave in extremely strange magical ways. Henry called him before the court that Saturday afternoon and asked him to do his routine for the King's guest, Karl of Sweden. "Hey king, how'd you like to know how to make gunpowder? Or aluminum housing material? Or icecream?" ---------------------------------------- Response 3 of 11 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 8:58 pm lynch / unidel "What speakest thou of?" "Or flying machines? Or ten-speed bicycles?" "Art thou a madman?" "Nay, I speak the truth! How would you like to be the first country to be run by nuclear power?" "What's he talking about?" King Karl asked King Henry. "I don't know." "I think he's mad,"Karl opined. "Maybe this is just a new act." ". . .or electric toasters! We could run them off the fission reactor in North Cornwall!" "Come on, jester, do the routine about the old man and the cow." "You want a demonstration, eh?" The jester pulled a rough wooden table before himself in view of the kings. "Alright, first you take this sulphur. . ." and on he went, showing the king how to make gunpowder. "There you have it king! Gunpowder!" "It looks like dirt." "Very colorful dirt, though" Karl said, smiling. ---------------------------------------- Response 4 of 11 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 9:00 pm lynch / unidel "Oh yeah?" the jester said, "Well, watch this!" He pointed to the hills in the distance. "I've had two royal tons of this 'dirt' put in the hillside. Behold!" He gave a signal to a serf standing by the pile of powder, and the serf obediantly dropped his torch on the top of it. budBRAUMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!! "Amazing!" shouted King Henry. "You know it," the jester replied. "I wonder what happened to the serf?" asked king Karl. "You are truly a magician! A wizard true!" Henry said. "Yeah," the jester replied. "Thou art from henceforth the prime wizard of England. (This really oughtn't happen) And so, the geniusjester was given all the time and money he desired to do his work. * ** * * * * "Are you sure you want to do this?" ---------------------------------------- Response 5 of 11 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 9:02 pm lynch / unidel "Look, have I ever steered you wrong before, Henry?" "Well, sir jester, I can recall when your fusion reactor in Chesire blew up. I could call that a wrong steering." "A small mistake," the jester said, not turning his eyes from the control board of the B-52. "Half of England is useless, and now we must all wear your magical suits of lead when we go outside." The jester quickly turned to the king and snapped, "STOP WHINING! I CAN'T STAND WHINERS!" "sorry, sir jester." "AND STOP CALLING ME JESTER!" "and what shall I callest thou?" The jester paused for a moment and checked the altimeter, clutching his temple for a second. The left frontal lobe of his brain had completely rotted off. "I. . .AM SIR . . .SIR. . .SIR. . ." he repeated, over and over again. "Sir 'Sir'?" "Yes! That's it!" The jester sighed in relief. ---------------------------------------- Response 6 of 11 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 9:04 pm lynch / unidel Had the king not said something, he would have been repeating himself forever since his cortical feedback control center was starting to leak. But the jester was far from realizing it at that time. "Sir Sir?" "Yes, Sir Henry?" "Why do we fly now over Paris?" "Are You whining again????" "NO NO NO, not at all. It's just that, as thou knowest, we are at war with the French." "Not after I lay a Q-Bomb on 'em. Yuk yuk yuk . . " and the jester began yuking again and again until the king asked, "What is a Q-Bomb?" "It's a QuartzAtomic weapon. You see, I get a serf to split a quartz atom with an ionic 'bullet', thus releasing the incredible power of the quartz atom, turning it from a Q238 to two atoms of Carbon!!" "You are amazing Sir sir!" "You know it," the jester replied. Then, pressing a microphone to his lips, he began speaking to the ---------------------------------------- Response 7 of 11 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 9:05 pm lynch / unidel bombadier. "Bombadier? Is the Q-bomb ready?" "It's in its place, sire, but I cannot get it ta work!" "What's the problem?" "I can't understand it!" "What do you mean, you can't understand it?" "Well, it doesn't even LOOK like a bomb!" "What do you . . .here Henry, take over!" the jester shouted, giving Henry the control stick (Authors Note: King Henry the second did not know how to fly an airplane) Running back to the bomb compartment of the plane, totally oblivious to the downward tilt it was taking, the Jester tried summing up the situation. "Alright now, what do you mean, you can't get the Bomb to work?" "Well, all you gave me was this hammer and this piece of rock! That's hardly a bomb!" "DON'T WHINE, GODDAMN IT! GOD HOW I HATE WHINERS" "Sorry sir." ---------------------------------------- Response 8 of 11 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 9:07 pm lynch / unidel "And that isn't just a 'hammer' and a 'rock'! Thats an IONIC hammer and a piece of pure QUARTZ! (In his mentally deranged state, the jester had disregarded a few of the basic laws of physics in designing his bomb.) Grabbing the serf by the hair he shoved the hammer into his face, "THIS IS THE HAMMER, RIGHT?" "Right, sire." "And THIS," he said, shoving the piece of quartz in his face, "IS THE QUARTZ, RIGHT?" "right" "YOU SPLIT THE QUARTZ," he said, banging him on the top of the head with the quartz. "Right, sire. Does the plane feel funny to you?" The serf pointed to things in the plane rolling down the floor, "Feels like she's tipping to me." "SHUTUP, WHINER!!" and he hit the serf on the head with the Ionic hammer. In one second, the jester had done to the serf what a brain tumor had been trying to do to the jester for years. The body of the dead serf fell to the floor. ---------------------------------------- Response 9 of 11 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 9:09 pm lynch / unidel "Damned whiner," was all the jester could say. "Sir Sir! SIR SIR! HELP!" came a voice from the intercom. It was Henry. "What's the trouble?" "Your flying machine! It has gone wild!" Glancing out the window, the jester noticed that the tilt of the land was very great, which meant that the plane was descending at a very steep (45-55 degrees) angle. "DAMN IT," he shouted into the intercom, "THAT'S THE TROUBLE WITH WORKING WITH WHINERS!! GO TO HELL!" "BUT SIR SIR!!" The jester ignored any further noise that came out of the intercom. "Guess I'll have to do this myself." So, donning a parachute and grabbing his quartz and hammer, the jester leapt from the side of the airplane to the pitiful sounds of Henry in the pilot's compartment praying the Lord's Prayer again and again. ---------------------------------------- Response 10 of 11 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 9:13 pm lynch / unidel ZZZRRROOOOOWWWW-bWAAMMMMM!!!!! went the plane as it smashed through the Arc de Triomphe in the main square of Paris. Jacques Giscard, a peasant farmer, turned from his plowing and looked towards the city when he heard the explosion. "Mon Dieu," he exclaimed. He followed the trail of smoke the plane had left up into the sky, and it was at the end of this trail of smoke that he saw the figure in the parachute, gently sailing down. He called his son Jorges to his side and the two of them stared at the descent. They were perplexed, not only at the fact of a man floating out of the sky, but also of his strangely pounding a rock with a hammer during his descent. When he finally came to earth, they ran out to see him. He was sitting on the top of a dungheap, still pounding his rock. Jacques asked him (in French, of course): "Who are you?" But the figure remained silent, intently pounding his ---------------------------------------- Response 11 of 11 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 12/7/77 9:14 pm lynch / unidel rock. He was oblivious to it all. And then the jester dropped the rock and the hammer and looked out and saw that he had indeed bent time and distorted history, and that he had made England a radioactive wasteland and had given the world a taste of television several hundred years to early, that he had made the name of Band-Aids and Tootsie Rolls household names far before their times, that he had started a revolt against the established church when it was needed least, and that he had probably started the rapid decay of Western Civilization before its golden age had begun. Seeing this he began repeating the introduction to Star Trek, "Space. . the final frontier. . .we the crew of the USS Enterprise. . ." again and again as the last partitions of his brain began dissolving. Jacques and Jorges could only look on in amazement, and ten minutes and fifty five Star Trek introductions later, the jester died of brain hemmoraging.