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back Telemachus and the Fly by Paul Garner, Peter Wilson Number of episodes: 20 Words of previous episode revealed to each author: 6 Telemachus looked up from his coffee. The sky was pink-grey outside, as if he was encased within a giant, inflamed cerebellum. Crows glided backwards against the wind and a truck printed like a giant breakfast-cereal packet glided by on the ring road. "Did I have breakfast this morning?" he wondered. It was so hard to tell. The only thing he did remember clearly from the morning was that his toothbrush had disappeared mysteriously overnight. When he'd described the situation to his flatmate she had insisted that it had been her toothbrush all along, which left him wondering if he'd ever had a toothbrush at all, or ever brushed his teeth in the mornings, or whether he'd just imagined that he must have done, because that's what people do in the mornings. If that was the case then there could easily be other things; mundane, routine things which he thought he remembered but instead had only imagined. His subconscious mind could have invented a whole morning routine for him - it seemed dimly remembered, as if conducted while still half-asleep, but perhaps it was just sketchily conceived. He looked down and was glad to see he had at least made it out of the house fully dressed. That was unusual for this time in summer. Very few people could withstand the heat fully dressed. It was common for both sexes in the region go topless due to the season. The oily slick rolled out at sea, blue-black with sickly molten rainbows. Telemachus imagined for a moment that it was alive, or had been once, and now had dissolved into a cancerous ooze, an autistic blob-consciousness tripping a thin flim across deep, deep water. The cool, salty water, an enormous heat sink, always nibbling away at the land, grinding against it, lapping over it, arching back and crashing down into it, showering spray across it's cliffs. Sometimes Telemachus felt that each moment was a work of art, to be savoured and appreciated in all its infinite, minute details... at other times he could let a moment stretch out until the tension was palpable, and he became filled with a dreadful feeling, bordering on terror. As he watched the oil-smothered ocean, with its hypnotic, rhythmic motions he started to feel this dread come upon him. For an instant he almost had the impulse to wade out into the slick and drench himself in the pungent organic crude, then he snapped out of it, suddenly fearful for his sanity. A fly buzzed lazily from spot to spot on the sand beside him, perhaps licking an invisible meal of salt and microscopic algae from each grain. He wondered what it would be like to inhabit a world where every surface was covered with food, viewed through monochromatic, prismatic eyes, refracting, fracturing the world... buzz, land, nibble, buzz, land, nibble. Telemachus rolled over, the sand sticking to his damp body. He felt the sun warm his back, the radiant heat of a distant furnace penetrating the deeper layers of his skin, and he felt good... warm and good, and safe... content. He allowed his mind to drift, drift out to sea on a swell of old memories. The boat rocked and creaked side to side. The swell wasn't easing off as he had hoped. "Better take some Donepezil," thought Telemachus. He stumbled his way down below deck to find his stash. Opening the bathroom cabinet the contents spilled out, covering him in band-aids, old tubes of ointment, creams, condoms and some Kotex that the fly had left. He spat his way out of some desiccating preparation-H, cursing to himself. Alone in a sea of memories, all he could hope for was a reef upon which to flounder. A stone and a wish, sink, or swim like a fish. Those were his options... or to dream on, outside of time, clinging to this reef. Telemachus wanted to scream, "Throw me a lifeline!" But there was no one to hear, and no one to answer. Only the fly, always following him it seemed. For a moment he wasn't sure where it was, then he heard it buzz and land on his head, perhaps gleaning a meagre meal of salt spray and oil from each hair. The thought disturbed Telemachus and he shook his head, to disturb the fly in turn, but the fly had nowhere else to land and it alighted on him once more. Suddenly it seemed to him that his predicament was all the fly's fault, somehow this silent insect companion had lured him out here, to what end he could not imagine. Despair overtook him... to have been conned by such an inconsequential creature! The clouds above were broken and chalky, covering most of the sky, moving as one mass in the brisk wind. It seemed almost as if they weren't clouds of water vapour at all, but smoke from a huge fire as wide as the horizon and just out of sight. Exhausted now, Telemachus examined the patterns on the back of his hand; finely tesselated, triangular wrinkles, unlike the marble lines of his palm. Slipping in and out of half sleep the patterns seemed to take on a special meaning, but the key to understanding it was always just out of reach, until it eluded him for good as he drifted into a dream... It was a majestic scene, looking out over the Turkish empire, with the island of Atlantis as the jewel in its centre. It rose obliquely out of the water, a square-edged, geometric island of pale blue and red stone. Each side of the island was devoted to a huge port, each port greater than any other in the known world. The civillian population was tiny, vastly outnumbered by the traders, sailors, and soldiers from the three thousand garrison forts securing this vital strategic asset. A fleet of hundreds of ornate vessels arrived at the southern port, Telemachus' among them. He had in his possession the object of a lengthy quest, a valuable prize with which to curry favour with the King. It was a helmet, in silver and gold, with interlocking plates spreading out behind like a ceremonial head-dress, in a design of stylised eagle's wings. It's origins were lost to history but it was a talisman, a symbol of great power. The dream swept on; the helmet was presented to the King, all was well, until it was discovered that the helmet was incomplete - two solid gold horns were missing. The King was furious and accused Telemachus' master, who had been the one to present the gift, of stealing them. Telemachus assured him that the helmet had been incomplete when he had found it, and his master had protested his innocence to the King, but still the King did not believe him. He was furious, believing the helmet to be robbed of its power without the missing horns, and in his rage he had Telemachus' master arrested for interrogation. Telemachus' master was wrapped in a straight jacket and strung up over a pit of acid. His captors would ask him again and again, "Where are the horns?" and each time he would cry, "I don't know!" and they would dip his feet into the acid and ask him again. Telemachus watched in horror as his master was tortured in this way. His master watched him too, and started to shout out, "It was Telemachus! Telemachus stole them!" but his captors took no notice. The longer this went on the more he came to believe that Telemachus was responsible for his desperate situation, and as he writhed in agony he would stare into Telemachus' eyes and say, "I'll get you for this!" with true bitterness in his wretched voice. Suddenly Telemachus had reason to fear for his own safety, as he saw that his master had managed to get his hands free. As his captors lowered him again towards the pit he was able to shimmy up the chain and swing out and away, to land safely. Wasting no time he took up a nearby stick to use as a club and advanced on Telemachus. His grotesquely acid-ravaged features were a fearsome sight, and Telemachus ran wildly through the corridors of the palace until he woke himself up in fright! The warm water lapped across his shoulders and the fly buzzed and landed on his head once more, which was fortunate as that was the only part of Telemachus that was above water. Fly had returned. "Tele!" "Fly!" "Wait till you hear, Tele, the adventures I've had!" The trees swayed softly in the breeze. "It's been a long time," thought Telemachus. He looked up at the branches, not quite bare, the waxy shoots belying the dormant life within, with stubborn copper foliage that looked radiant and starkly beautiful against the indigo sky. So much beauty in the world. So much life, and death, and living inbetween. So much substance; rocks, granules, particles. So much nothing; ethereal, fleeting thoughts, concepts, shapes and sounds which managed to exist somehow without quite being real. He'd floated so far to wind up on these shores. At least here there was life, real organic life; grass and trees, and ferns and weeds, not just the mineral life of beaches, sand and reefs. The fly buzzed off into the undergrowth, perhaps feeling it didn't need Telemachus any more. "I don't need you either!" he shouted after it, suddenly in high spirits once more. Music filled the air. Lutes, harps rang out through the verdant forest grove. Telemachus dipped his feet into the cool stream and he watched dreamy-eyed as a small trout nibbled at his toes. Fly sat on a mossy stone, sunning and preening herself. "I am the green leaf, I am the stone, I am the playful trout" - flowing calmly through Telemachus, his lips formed the words of the mantra, lightly expelling air. He gazed at the trout beneath him. The trout gazed back. "What do you want with me?" its glassy eyes seemed to ask. Telemachus had heard that you could catch trout by gently tickling them on their bellies until they went to sleep. It had been a while since anyone had tickled him on the belly, he thought to himself, which of course reminded him of the girl who had... It had been early winter, before the shortest day, during a lull in his journey. He'd stopped for a few months in a small fishing village, working and boarding in the local inn to earn enough money to continue with his travels. The innkeeper's daughter was fond of songs and poems and having travelled afar he had plenty to relate. Sometimes late at night, after the bar had closed and the last drunken fisherman had rolled home, they would sit by the fire with a bottle and some pages of his lonely traveller's scribblings, which she'd read with a look of thoughtful concentration as if trying to absorb every word. He wondered sometimes what she saw in them, modest as they were, but he didn't wonder too long about it because, after she'd finished reading, she would let him kiss her and they'd lie beside the glowing embers, feeling the warmth without and within, and from each other. She scared him because he knew she didn't really care for him; he was just a novel sideline, an interesting stranger. She had another man in the village already, a wealthy merchant who bought her expensive gifts. Sometimes he'd tell her she ought to quit the merchant, and she'd look at him with uncertain, sad eyes then glance away. It seemed to Telemachus that she found the idea of him more exciting than she found him in person. But still, they had those evenings by the fire... and sometimes she would tickle him, between his ribs and his hips where he was most ticklish. He would twitch and tense up involuntarily each time she did it, and she thought this was funny. But his feelings for her had grown stronger over the weeks while hers hadn't changed, and he'd been glad in a way when he finally had enough money together to leave the village, and he could put the imminent heartache behind him. She had waved Telemachus off with a smile and a kiss that had meant nothing, and he'd sailed out of port cursing himself for being an emotional fool, all the while looking ahead to the sparkling blue horizon. He heard a ringing sound, dull at first, slowly getting louder, it came from no visible source. He looked at Fly. "Can you hear it too?" Fly buzzed an affirmative. "What it is it?" "I don't know!" Louder! They realised at the same time: "It's everywhere!" Telemachus started to panic, Fly zipped about madly. "Make it stop Tele! Make it stoppp!" He looked up at the horizon: now replacing the blue vista, gradually, was a superimposition, beginning to be made out. Like steel shutters on the roof of heaven, grey structures began to form. The horror replacing such beauty was unbearable; Telemachus shut his eyes, Fly fell to the ground in a puff of dust. The sun was blacked out but there remained a dull light. Sick, yellow, cavern-like. The sky was a steel mass, pushing down yet unmoving. "Trapped! Trapped!" thought Telemachus. He reached down, gravity sucking the life from his fingers, thumbed open his pill-box: Clozapine. The croakers called it 'the gold-standard drug of anti-psychotic therapy'. Telemachus knew, he called it 'the gold angel' due to its efficacious nature. The angel was what is known on the street as an outer: it simultaneously depressed and stimulated different parts of the brain. Its multi-purpose properties mean it can't really be called an upper or a downer: an outer. And that's what Telemachus needed now, to get out of the dead steel world. Wind howled around the butresses of the tower in front of him. A mist of fine rain particles swirled around him and beaded on the burnished, impossibly clean surface of the enormous metallic structure. Nothing broke the smooth lines, nothing gave any hint that the tower was anything other than solid steel all the way through. Telemachus looked up the trunk, but it was just as featureless all the way up, as far as he could see, until it was lost in the clouds. He suddenly got a strange feeling, almost like vertigo, though his feet were firmly planted on the ground (...invertigo), and imagined that the tower continued thousands of miles up into space... one end skewered into the Earth like it was a lollipop on a stick. Telemachus knew that the tower was in fact hollow. He also knew that it didn't continue upwards forever, or even out into space, but that a mile or so up it splayed out to support a dome-habitat, and on a clear day it would be visible from well over the horizon, like a strange mushroom, or abstract tree sculpture. He'd once lived up there in fact. The habitat was large enough that if you were near the centre, even from a fifth story office like the one Telemachus had occupied, you seldom noticed that the horizon was particularly close or felt that you were above the clouds. It would be easy to forget that the world below existed, in any real sense, yet it was also impossible to totally lose an abstract sense of the world below, because everyone in the habitat was involved with the oversight and administration of the world's affairs. It made Telemachus shudder to think he had once been one of the overseers, in a minor post it is true, but playing his part nonetheless. He had come so far, seen so much now. So much trouble in the world. He slumped against the cold, immovable column, suddenly weak, and ran his fingers through the grass. It made him feel better, clutching the pliant blades in his hand. He marvelled that they had been allowed to grow right up to the trunk of the tower; he would have expected a buffer of scorched dead dirt, or smooth slabs of concrete, at the base. It made the sight stranger, a giant steel shaft bursting straight out of the fertile soil. He wanted to cut it down. The money tree that had grown so much. It was geo-tropically inverted, that is, it was a root. He couldn't do it. He had his own troubles, he was too busy right now. He opened his eyes. Opening the kitchen cuboard, he purveyed its contents. Five tins of Tomato soup, a mostly empty bag of pasta and some dented cans of P.M.U. He reached for a can of Pick Me Up and wondered if it was still alright. "Of course it is," he said to himself, "it's in a can, right?" He listened to the muted hiss as he popped the tab, then gulped down the sickly sweet caffeinated beverage. The sun was creeping nervously over the black trapezoids, as if it was afraid it would beach. "Sail on, old friend," he thought. He stared, then turned away, watching the luminous purple spots slowly fade. "I have only so much strength left to go on," he thought. He felt as if every part of him was heavier than usual, as if the air was thicker and harder to breathe, his mind seemed dull, the only lively part of him was the hunger pang in his belly. Telemachus stretched, then sagged under the weight of nervous exhaustion, wondering if this was what it would be like when he was old and bent and shrivelled. He lay back in the darkness and waited, waited for something to happen to him, as he no longer had the energy to overcome his own inertia. He wished the innkeeper's daughter was here, to run her fingers through his hair, to spark up some hidden energy reserves deep within him with her own life force, to make him feel something more than this leaden deadness. But she was a long way away, and even if she were to step through the door right now he knew that she would regard his prone, self-pitying form with contempt, not compassion. Still, still... becalmed he drifted away to sleep once more. "...Go to sleep, everything is alright." I close my eyes then I drift away Into the magic night I softly say a silent prayer Like dreamers do Then I fall asleep and dream my dreams of you In dreams I walk with you In dreams I talk to you In dreams you're mine all the time With you ever in dreams, in dreams But just before the dawn I awake and find you gone I can't help it, I can't help it If I cry I remember that you said goodbye It's too bad that all these things Can only happen in my dreams Only in dreams, beautiful dreams "Good ol' Roy", Telemachus thought as he ran the "In Dreams" playback. He thought of Thelonious and took another swig of whiskey, straight no chaser. The familiar shudder of revulsion embraced him like an old friend and, almost as it did so, the revulsion passed so that a warm, welcoming relaxation was all that remained. He felt as if his chemical composition had been subtlely changed, as if every molecule in his body had rotated on the spot, just half a degree. No one would ever know. In dreams everybody knows your name, but not their own. The playback started to insinuate itself into his mind, and he went with the flow... it felt like falling alseep. He came to in a black void, but with the sounds of the bar still filtering through to him. He felt something in his hand - it was a playback mechanism, with a hand-scrawled label on the side which read "In Dreams". Curious, Telemachus put on the headset and ran the playback. It felt like falling asleep. He came to in a black void. He could hear a faint murmur and tinkling of sound, which seemed very far away, but it was hard to tell in the distanceless void. He felt something in his hand - it was a playback mechanism, with a hand-scrawled label on the side which read "In Dreams". He hesitated, troubled by a momentary sense of déjà vu, but then, curious about the mechanism, Telemachus put on the headset and ran the playback. Telemachus barely felt the sleepy sensation this time, it was like a long blink, a wipe and dissolve of his consciousness. The black void he found himself in seemed strangely familiar. Silence rang painfully in his ears. He felt something in his hand - it was a playback mechanism, with a hand-scrawled label on the side which read "In Dreams". A wave of nausea and disorientation rolled over him, with the déjà vu-sense throbbing in his head like an existential hangover. He felt an irritating tug of curiosity towards the playback mechanism in his hand. "What is on the crystal?" he wondered. He unplugged it from the mechanism and turned it over in his hand. The crystal was a small cube with sides about three centimetres long, and although he was adrift in a field of absolute blackness, it seemed to refract light from all directions into rainbow shards that blurred in his eyes. Unable to pry any of its mysteries loose by examining it, he replaced the crystal into the mechanism and ran the playback. "What was I doing?" wondered Telemachus, as if he'd been daydreaming for a moment then returned his attention to the task at hand. He looked around at the featureless black depth on all sides, unable to tell if he was really looking around in different directions or if in fact he was just imagining he did so... as if he was part of a surreal pantomime and the gods were laughing at him and shouting, "Behind you!" and pointing at the paradise garden of daisy-meadows, butterflies, blue skies and sunshine at his back... that he could never quite see. He could hear a faint, intermittent buzzing sound somewhere, but he could not discern which direction it was coming from. He felt something in his hand - it was a playback mechanism, with a hand-scrawled label on the side which read "In Dreams". "Didn't I just run that playback?" Telemachus wondered to himself, confused. But he couldn't have done, as there was the mechanism in his hand still. Curious, Telemachus put on the headset and ran the playback. It felt like falling asleep. He came to in a black void. Although featureless it seemed fractured somehow, or prismatic. The intermittent buzzing was louder. He felt something in his hand - it was a playback mechanism, with a hand-scrawled label on the side which read "In Dreams". He felt an impulse to put on the headset, and acted on it, initiating the playback. He felt nothing. Vague monochrome shapes drifted around him. He buzzed. The shapes changed. He smelled food in a definite direction and headed to towards it, buzzing all the while. "What is that sound?" he wondered. He stopped buzzing and tasted the food. He could not tell what it was; it had no flavour, but he sensed it was nutritious. "Where am I?" he thought for a moment, then he smelled some more food in a different direction. The shapes changed as he buzzed. He found it hard to string his thoughts together, but he had a nagging sense of dread and the information coming in on his senses seemed alien; horrific even, mechanistic and robbed of meaning. He had become the fly. If left to his own on the floor of the ward, he would stay like that all day or all week. Of course this wasn't allowed by the staff of The Sunshine Institute. They knew their job. When Telemachus slipped into his catatonic reveries they propped him up, somewhere where he wouldn't get in the way of the other patients. It was policy at Sunshine to allow as much freedom within the ward and grounds as possible. Listed in the mission statement was: "Patient Activity - 5. a) Patients should be allowed as much opportunity to move around as possible, this includes daily excursions to walk the grounds and explore (under observation) the flower gardens." Sunshine was a free-range institution. The irreparable psychotics in its care were given every opportunity to peck around and play outside. This was principally because the institute's founder, Dr. Carl. K. Weisbaum, was an outdoors freak. He believed in the healing power of nature and sunlight, hence the name. All was copper and bronze, dirt and dust, chocolate and terracotta, mushroom and lichen, rust and russet. Winter hadn't quite killed off autumn yet, but spring was already on the way. There was a chill in the air but sun in the sky; the wind blew cold, but brushed the clouds aside. Telemachus awoke, glad to find he was himself once more. He had lost his clothes. He got up and spoke a meaningless word unto the world then strode out across the field, keeping the sun to his left, heading South for home. He read the precautionary document: "Avoid swimming filamentous helical nucleocapsids." "Sure will," thought Telemachus. He didn't care much for the water anyway. He read on: "Infection occurs when your skin comes in contact with contaminated fresh water in which certain types of snails are living." Telemachus put down the card, listening instead to the hum of the engines. He fell asleep and dreamed. He dreamed he was being chased by snails packing water pistols. He couldn't let them squirt him, that water was deadly. But the snails were fast. The lotus vapours had already taken effect... he found himself flashing in and out of states of lucid dream. Was he a Man or a fly? And the snails, the snails! Lettuce!! His mind a tossed salad; leaves of crisp, jumbled thought, ready to be eaten by hungry hermaphrodites. What had she done to him?! The air was smoky blue. So much to do and so little time! Breathe deep and relax; he tried to calm himself, diasarm the timebombs in his mind. The Siren, making her swooning idiot-noise and flashing her red lights at him, that's when this madness had started... Telemachus had been waiting at the station for a train, to carry him the last short leg of his journey home. He'd looked up at the night sky and seen one star shining brighter than all the others - Venus; not a star, not a god, far more distant than the Moon, yet he could feel her pull tugging, tugging at his soul. Then all of a sudden it came free! He drifted up, up into the deep, dark purple of the night, drawn to her. Out in space he gazed upon the infinite brightness, the benevolent burning fury of the Sun. Disembodied, he felt its warmth abstractly. "I am Energy," it seemed to say to him. "I am Life," replied Telemachus, and with a thought he drifted outward, beyond. Beyond the outskirts of infinity. Then suddenly, he was back. Telemachus looked around - he was no longer at the train station. He didn't know where he was in fact. He felt sand between his toes and he could hear the sea; waves breaking, seagulls circling overhead. He couldn't see the water - the rolling waves around him were all sand dunes, covered in Marram grass the colour of frost-covered sage, but he sensed it was nearby, a brisk salt wind blowing sand through his hair. He headed into the breeze, nothing to lose, adrift and free and at the crest of a dune he stood and looked out to the horizon. The sea was blue-grey and brutal, white foam, white noise, inhuman; it made him feel alive. Telemachus ran down to where the waves were breaking and let the water suck the warmth from his feet, washing sand and bits of marine debris around his toes and ankles. He ran up the beach, splashing through the salt foam and let out a wild, wordless child-cry. With a gasp of breath he plunged into the surf, let the brine soak into his pores, and swam out into deeper water. The seawater was clean, full of mineral and organic flotsam, but that was how seawater should be, not dirty, oily, as it had been that day when he'd first encountered the fly. Telemachus swam easily among the chop and swell, parallel to the coast. The beach began to be broken up here and there by rocky outcroppings and small boulders. He swam on as the shore became more rugged, thrilling to the wildness of everything, even his own chill. He swam on until the outcrops became cliffs and then some more, until the cliffs came to a head. Telemachus noticed he was getting fatigued, and he couldn't remember exactly how long he had been swimming for. He knew he needed to round the cape and find a beach where he could rest, and yet something inside him wanted to keep swimming out to sea. The current was pulling him out in fact, and though he struggled against it, he found it hard to make any headway. As the shore gradually got further away, despite his best efforts, Telemachus decided to conserve his energy and concentrate on staying afloat. It was mid-afternoon and he hoped the current would carry him closer to land before nightfall. A couple of hours passed and Telemachus was very tired and cold, but he could see ahead of him a small offshore island. It looked like the current might carry him near enough by for him to swim to it. Another hour passed and the tiny island loomed large to the exhausted Telemachus. Curiously he could hear an eerie wailing sound drifting across the water. The ocean bobbed him up and down. When he was in a valley amongst the waves he couldn't see land at all, but this time as he came up on a swell he thought he could make out a figure, sitting on a rock at the nearest tip of the island. Telemachus floated on, gradually getting closer. The wailing grew louder as the sun approached the horizon, and a mist started to roll in. As he bobbed up each time, Telemachus tried to catch a better glimpse of the figure, and the world gradually turned grey. All except for the figure. She glowed warm and red through the mist, singing strangely. Naked, beautiful, with long flowing hair, or perhaps draped with seaweed, he couldn't tell. Even in his wretched state something about her sent an electric thrill of lust running through him; he found a little more energy to swim towards her, a beacon of carnal desire shining in the mist. He swam for ten minutes, his arms barely able to move any more from the cold and exertion. She was still distant, wailing and shining, alluring. He forced himself to keep swimming; nearly half an hour passed and he felt he was making progress, yet each time he looked up he didn't seem to be any closer to her. He was moving more and more slowly all the time, but still he struggled on. Another half hour passed and Telemachus was so exhausted he had trouble keeping his head above the waves. He had been swimming constantly and yet she was still just out of reach, and now he felt like he couldn't make another stroke. Her singing filled his ears as he sputtered and choked for breath, unable to summon the energy to raise his head. He realised he had been shivering with cold only when the shivering stopped. He tried to remember what that meant; perhaps the onset of hypothermia? He swallowed a gulp of intensely saline water as a wave swept over him, and found it was calmer under the surface. He couldn't hear her singing clearly from below the waves, though he could make out a little of her red glow. It was a relief to stop struggling, to let his tired body rest. He felt warm, lightheaded even. Gradually even the glow faded; things seemed to slow down, become less distinct, the sound of the water a distant memory, until he was lost in a sleepy darkness. Eventually even his awareness of that faded until it seemed he was no more... He came to, lying prone on the station platform with a mouthful of pearls. "The fruit of the oyster, strong enough to pass through a cow with impunity," said Seven. "But this isn't Paris and I'm not a pearl diver," replied Telemachus. With that the platform disappeared, leaving the mouthful and its catch. Telemachus turned to leave. Seven spoke: "It's the sudden change in fortune they like, whether good or bad the outcome, it doesn't matter." "Drama addicts," Telemachus mumbled. Seven continued: "Remember, men's bare chests are nothing compared to what you take with you!" His voice faded as Telemachus made a way down the stoney path. He could still hear Seven rambling, but thankfully couldn't make out the words. "What is said is never as important or as soothing as the sounds made," thought Telemachus. Words came into his head, accompanied by music, he hummed along: You taught them it was bad, bad, bad, bad And now you wonder why? They're all stilted and sad, sad, sad, sad Like timid field mice, Bought into homes. You took the very natural, And shook the bone. Now you ask why, why, why, why? All that's left is dust and bones. At the bottom of the mountain Telemachus rifled through his pockets. Looking for the golden mean, perhaps he had some golden angels left. His pockets were empty. All he found was one silver pearl. Bibliography (for Peter Wilson's parts) Roy Orbison, "In Dreams" Johann Wolfgang Goethe, "The Flight to Italy" Kurt Vonnegut, "The Sirens of Titan" Yahoo search engine, "Parasites and Tropical diseases" Written between 18 February and 2 March, 2002. Thanks. back © All work herein copyright the stated authors.

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