by Jo Anzalone
(A continuation...sort of...of Mixed Up Maximus, only the characters
are who they are supposed to be again....for a while, for this while.)
It had been a brutal, merciless, and very, very....wet...attack.
The enemy ship possessed the very latest in offensive wave-
making technology.
Only his great litheness, finger tenacity, and years
of flamenco practice, had enabled Aubrey not to be washed
into the sea.
It had been a Surprise attack...of course, since his vessel
did bear that very name. But the enemy had come at them
out of the fog, their evil wave-makers suddenly rising from
beneath the sea.
"Look!" he had bellowed, pointing at the huge wave machines
that so vastly out-waved his much smaller ripple makers.
Wave after wave of, well, enemy waves hurtled amidship
from starboard to port, from aft to non-aft.
It had been their creative and delicate use of Stephen's brain surgery
equipment, that had finally toppled the largest of the enemy wave towers.
When it was over, when the last of the towels had been used,
Aubrey stood on the deck, pondering what sort of weapon,
what sort of...unique...battle strategy he might find to counter
the enemy's next attack.
He looked up...
he looked to the right...
he looked to the left...
then...he turned...laughing!
OF COURSE!
It was all about him...obvious as the fringe on his epaulettes.
If only he had looked behind him, he would probably have
thought of it sooner!
How sadly often he had looked right past it.
But the stark truth of it lay right under his very nose.
Indeed, it was everywhere...surrounding him on all sides.
How, oh HOW, could he have missed it??
"My countrymen!" he cried, holding one like an advancing
weapon of vengeance.
"We will confuse them with all our parallel lines!"
"We will approach them backwards...
...and overwhelm them with our vastly superior parallelness!"
Immediately he grabbed the nearest parallel, swinging it into
attack position.
Below deck, his faithful crew spent many hours in grueling
parallel practice.
Aubrey searched every inch of the Surprise for new and different
parallels.
Carefully, meticulously, he paralleled his entire vessel.
Finding half a parallel, a solitary bit with no partnering
"llel" for its lonely "para"...
he ordered, "Batten down the fouled dogwatch, dismast the
bonneted binnacle list! I need more LLEL for this PARA!!!"
But it was when they saw him tie back his ponytail that they
really knew he meant business
and, leaping onto the parallels,
worked all night,
soon having the Surprise fully battle-ready.
But...
just when Aubrey had got to thinking he was the only character
in this particular saga...
completely amazed eyes beheld the parallel-encrusted Surprise
through a telescope from behind
a more Roman parallel universe.
Aubrey had completely overlooked the obvious fact that
the glorious General spent the better part of his days amongst
the growing, bark-clad parallels of Germanian forests
or having possibly poisoned lunch handed through the more
netted parallels of captive gladiator life.
How COULD the good Captain know of the shade cast by
African parallels
or even the way new slaves were aligned?
Called back from the parallel outer walls of Elysium itself,
joined by a young airman, familiar with the whiter ways
of parallel life,
and those in aqua sweaters who kept themselves atop all
things parallel,
the General resolved that he had been too long confined in his
Roman parallel universe.
Joined also by those who had just now seen the light of things of a
more parallel nature,
and those who saw it and yet...changed...somehow the lines
of it,
or those whose very parallelness lay lightly as though upon the
surface of some stream,
the General paralleled his way from the Danube to the far side
of the far side of the world...
stopping only in New Jersey
and Mexico,
and arriving just as the battle was about to begin and parallels
were about to be drawn
from the parallel racks on either side of the exploding bell.
Quickly gathering the small parallels that had fallen to his cabin floor,
Aubrey leaned far out amongst them
to greet his arriving fellows.
"You come," he said, tipping his head to indicate some of his
weaponry, "from the east with the first light of the morning of
a new day at a time when the wind's eye has fouled the bitter
end of my coaming vane and all my cackle fruit is alee." (The
Captain, you see, loved nauticalspeak.)
But, then, ignoring the camera boom, he leapt onto a nearby
parallel and scurried up, daring them to follow.
Cort, whose parallels were of sturdier stuff than most,
watched and waited...knowing
that behind Aubrey's head, the parallels...converged...
and wove themselves together
in a manner impossible to cross.
And the only real surprise for the Surprise to use
would be to out-wave the enemy.
And so they did.
And in a vastly lessened parallel fashion, the Surprise
sailed home to Pittsburgh.