I have this fetish about Elmer's glue. Let me explain.

When I was a boy, around 8 or so, I was doing a project in my boarding school
one week where we were each given an egg, a box of 1000 toothpicks, a spool of
thread, and a bottle of Elmer's glue. Our task was to build a contraption to
keep the egg safe using only the toothpicks, thread, and glue. There were no
other rules.

We built during the science class and our teacher--Mrs. Braithwaite--would put
them into one of the cafeteria fridges for the rest of the time so the eggs
would stay fresh. Mrs. Braithwaite told us that at the end of the week, she
would take these contraptions--with the eggs inside--and drop them from the
roof of the school gym. We would be graded on the originality of our designs
and their utility.

There were lots of great ideas, it was pretty impressive for a bunch of 8- and
9-year olds. I had one of the best innovations. I poured some glue onto a table
in the corner of the classroom until it formed a thin flat puddle. I did this a
few more times on the rest of the table. Then I put up a sign that said "Do not
touch!" and pointed it out to Mrs. Braithwaite. She looked puzzled but played
along and told the students not to disturb my work. The next day, I had some
nice "sheets" of glue. Instant parachutes. Epic win. The other kids were
jealous and started doing the same thing.

 I should mention here that Mrs. Braithwaite was in her mid thirties, with
black hair and rimless glasses. She was short, about 5'3" but that was still
much taller than me or any of the other kids. And she had a pretty good body.
She looked kind of like an older Shannen Doherty, but nicer and more
normal-looking, not like a TV star. Usually she would wear a sweater and a
skirt that would come down past her knees and some flats. Basically a
nice-looking woman whether you were 7, 17, or 37, but not what I would call hot.

But anyways I was almost out of glue and still had a long ways to go on my
frame for the egg. So I asked Mrs. Braithwaite if I could have another bottle
of Elmer's. She said if she gave me more glue she'd have to give more to all
the students. I kept asking her and she caved and asked the class to vote.
Everyone making parachutes said yes and it was game on.

The whole episode was kind of like what the Pentagon and a big defense
contractor: they demonstrate an interesting technological capability, then fall
short in building the fighter jet or whatever, and they finally demand more
money to make the idea work. And they almost always get it. Anyways Mrs.
Braithwaite finally said OK but told me I'd have to help her deal with the
extra glue, whatever that meant. Anyways next thing you know there's glue all
over every flat surface in the classroom.

But I had another trick up my sleeve. I made more sheets for the next two days
and then put them into an overlapping pattern and added some more glue and
thread, being careful to save enough thread to attach the parachute and also
secure the egg in the frame I had built for it. The result was strong and big
and by the time the other kids realized what I was doing it was the end of
class on Thursday and they didn't have time to copy me. So I felt pretty good.
Right before school ended, Mrs. Braithwaite told me to stay after class,
though, so the good feeling didn't last long.

After the other students had left she closed the door and told me she was very
impressed with my project but that my approach had made it hard for her that
week because there was glue everywhere. There were some students who had
accidentally spoiled other students' parachutes by putting their hands on the
semi-dry glue puddles and that sort of thing.

Mrs. Braithwaite said that since I came up with the idea in the first place
that I should stay and help her fix the other students' parachutes to be
fair--not make them bigger, just put glue into the gaps that a few clumsy kids
had caused. They would still be structurally inferior to mine. I figured this
sounded fair. So we got a few bottles of Elmer's and went to work.

Anyway as she and I were fixing the glue puddles I looked at her and noticed
she was eating some of the glue. That's right, just like a little kid: eating
the Elmer's glue. She had some on her index finger and sucked it off. Some of
the glue was still on her face. There was a little dribble of glue coming down
from the corner of her mouth.

Now I am here to tell you that I felt something at that moment that I did not
fully understand for years. Mrs. Braithwaite asked me if I liked the taste of
glue. I said, "Um, I guess" or something like that but what happened next is
simultaneously kind of fuzzy and yet parts are also still crystal clear even 15
years later.

She came closer to me, rolled her finger in a puddle of still-wet glue, and
licked it clean. Then she brought the finger up to my mouth. I still remember
how her nails were polished: light pink, with a few scratches. I didn't know
what to do, so I just sucked her finger. I could still taste some of the
Elmer's glue on it. Then she put a little dab of glue on the side of her neck
and asked me if I wanted to lick it off.

At this point I was confused and a little scared. This was really weird and I
knew something wasn't right but damn it I liked Elmer's as much as the next kid
and it seemed kind of cool to do this with her. It wasn't like kissing a girl
or anything. So I did it. Then she asked if she could put some glue on me. I
said OK and next thing you know there's glue on my fingers and then they're in
her mouth. It felt great.

Then Mrs. Braithwaite took off her glasses and asked me to take off my shirt.
This part I remember very clearly because I was wearing a Phoenix Suns shirt
with Charles Barkley on it. The Suns were great back then. Anyway, I was
trembling a little bit but she put a hand on my knee and said everything was OK
and I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to.

That relaxed me a lot. I knew it must feel good when grownups made out or had
sex so I figured this might be pretty cool even though it was really weird. I
mean, Mrs. Braithwaite was *nice*. It's important to keep in mind how large a
teacher looms in your mind as a kid. But she was nice. I trusted her.

So anyways I took off my shirt and took a deep breath. Time seemed to bend in
on itself. I was covered in glue and she was licking it all off. My pants were
off--to this day I don't remember which one of us took them off or how--and
suddenly I was naked, with glue all over me.

Suddenly I noticed her skin becoming much darker than it was earlier, and her
head started to flatten and her body become skinnier as she licked the glue
from my chest. The next minute, I blinked in confusion as what stood before me
now looked like a large black snake.

"Ha! Fooled you!" she hissed. Now, before I devour you, I'd like to ask you one
thing:

"HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?"

Much to my surprise, there was a knock on the classroom door. As nervous as I
already was, I didn't feel comfortable having another person there. Mrs.
Braithwaite went to open the door and it turned out to be the school principal.

Mrs. Braithwaite let him and promptly exited the classroom. So, there I was
with my pants down in the excited state as I was, and the school principal
beginning to take his pants off.

"I am The Sussman", the principal said in a low, almost snake-like voice as
Mrs. Braithwaite slithered out the door.

"What?"

The principal, whose name I cannot recall to this day, slowly walked towards
me. I was hoping Mrs. Braithwaite would return soon, but with every passing
second, I was losing hope.

He promptly asked me to bend over and touch my toes, like the school gym
teacher did during gym class. Without warning, he rammed his long cock straight
up my ass. I must tell you, it hurt at first. Soon, I started crying.

"Have you read your SICP today?" he asked.

"But is that even relevant to the current situation or is it just --" I began
to retort automatically, but he cut me off.

"Nevermind. You have yet to achieve Satori, young padawan. Let me show you."

He took off his pants off completely. In place of his penis was something long
and black. My vision had begun to blur from the glue, so it was only until he
got close to my fact that I could see it was the head of a snake.

Shit.

Without warning, the snake extended from its crotch and chomped down hard on my
penis.
At first I tried to scream from the excruciating pain, but then the pain slowly
started to fade away and my vision blurred considerably. The room disappeared
into a haze of grey, which was followed by a dithered pattern with an X-like
cursor in the center.

A mouse logo appeared and started flashing. "What the fuck?" I thought to
myself. The words "Starting XFCE..." appeared.

"I have now managed to successfully connect to your X server," I heard his
voice emanating from inside my head. "Welcome to the XFCE desktop environment!"

"What is this?" I thought. I tried to move the cursor around, and I discovered
that I could do it by only thinking. I automatically moved it down to the XFCE
Menu at the bottom and clicked on the Terminal icon instinctively.

"NO!" The Sussman cried in a loud voice that filled my head. An intense wave of
pain coursed through my body as the terminal window opened. "First, you must
learn Scheme. Click on the DrScheme icon in the bottom right, the one that
looks like a red and blue Lambda."

"Oh no fucking way!" I exclaimed. "I won't listen to him." As if by the magic
of eval and apply, those words appeared in the terminal window next to the bash
prompt. "bash: I: command not found" followed, and the infuriating wave of pain
shook my body once again.

"LISTEN TO ME! I AM THE MASTER!" I heard The Sussman's voice fill my head,
sending more tendrils of pain through my body. I resisted the pain and slowly,
but deliberately, thought "sudo rm -rf /".

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

The Sussman screamed madly and an even stronger wave of pain blasted its way
through my body. I thought "enter" and the terminal complied, asking for the
root password.

"What now?" The Sussman laughed heartily. "You think a mere mortal like you
could defeat me that easily? I am root!"

Without much thought I immediately thought "SATORI" followed by enter.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO..." The scream and resulting waves of pain from The Sussman
faded away as everything flickered and turned black. The stark white text
"Connection to X server lost" appeared, followed by a kernel panic. The system
had halted, but how could I get out?
I now realized that I had killed The Sussman, who was the only hope of my
escape. I just... existed, in a void of a coredump, thinking.

"Now I remember! Mrs. Braithwaite! That snake that loved glue!" ...but how
could she help now? How could I even get out of this virtual existence? After
pondering the situation for an unknown amount of time since time() had stopped,
I came up with the answer:

"I AM. I THINK. THEREFORE I EXIST." I thought. "I AM. I THINK. THEREFORE I
EXIST. I AM. I THINK. THEREFORE I EXIST. I AM. I THINK. THEREFORE I EXIST." The
incantation played itself out in my mind.

"What else could I reason, supposing that I exist?" I thought to myself. "I am,
and I think, and I exist. What more?" Those words continued to repeat
themselves in my mind, until I accidentally thought "I exit." instead of "I
exist."

A bright flash of light filled my vision and then "Analog input: 720x480 75Hz"
appeared in bright white letters in the middle.
"Checking memory... 1048576K OK"
"Boot: found master boot record on primary master.
lilo: "

I thought "enter" and the kernel booted, this time in single-user mode. No
traces of The Sussman appeared, and finally bash finished loading. "IRL" I
thought, followed by "enter".

"Analog input: 1600x1200 75Hz" flickered in my view for a few seconds, before
changing to what I had thought was reality -- I laid on the table, covered in
Elmer's glue. The principal lay lifeless on the floor, his snakelike black
penis shriveled up and similarly dead.

Mrs. Braithwaite walked in as I sat up and began peeling the dried glue from my
body, starting with my penis.

"What in Haruhi's name happened here?!?!" she shrieked with horror at the sight.

"I... I have no idea," I responded quietly.
"I would have to agree. I just fainted and had the vision that I was a snake
that loved glue."

The principal was later found to have died of mysterious causes -- his entire
brain was missing, as were all of his organs. It was as if someone moved
everything inside his body to /dev/nul. We had the contest the next day, and I
won with my egg parachute.

I normally take the bus home, so I headed for the bus stop. A short while
later, the bus had stopped at a traffic light outside of the library when all
of a sudden this huge black snake head with retarded-looking eyes pops through
the window and screams loudly "HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?" With almost no
thought I departed the bus, and I ran inside as quickly as possible; the snake
head was now chasing me around as I frantically searched for the legendary book
among the shelves. I spotted the distinctive blue cover and ran toward it, the
huge head inches from my ass. With great force I pulled the book from the shelf
and instinctively directed it at the black head which by now was dripping with
saliva at the mouth. It disappeared as it made contact with the book,
disintegrating into a flurry of glowing parentheses.

I just sat there dazed for a few seconds, watching the feathery parentheses
slowly become smaller and fade away into nothingness. Slowly, I stood up, still
clutching the purple book. I wondered about what I should do with it, then
decided to put it back on the shelf. After doing so, I walked back out to the
exit and boarded a bus, for where I did not know. The bus driver looked
strangely familiar as I dropped the coins into the farebox;

"HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?" he suddenly yelled at me. Oh fuck, I thought
to myself. Now I knew why he looked so familiar: He was the principal I thought
had died, he was The Sussman!

"Umm... no," I responded weakly. Suddenly his head looked a lot darker than it
was a moment ago, and an evil grin appeared across his face. The bus's doors
slammed shut and The Sussman's face turned an almost negroid black. His left
hand shot at me and I could see that it was not a hand, but the head of a snake
which protruded from its end. I turned around and ran towards the back of the
articulated bus.

"Let me show you the power of Satori," The Sussman said in a deep hiss. His
snakelike arm extended from his body towards me as I continued to run for what
seemed like eternity towards the longbus's rear door.

"Longbus is loooooooooooooooooooooong", I thought to myself as I continued to
run, the snake's head fast approaching. The bus seemed to go on forever. After
a while, I passed the driver's seat. WTF, I thought. Ahead of me was The
Sussman, standing in the aisle facing the same direction as me, with his left
arm pointed forward.

I looked behind me, and saw the snake head was still approaching; I had managed
to outrun it for a bit, and it was racing towards me. RECURSION! I jumped into
the stepwell just as the head gained a sudden burst of speed, piercing through
The Sussman and sending bright glowing parentheses everywhere. I watched first
his body, then his hands disintegrate in the same manner that the head had
earlier. The long black arm, floating in mid-air, slowly disappeared into a
cloud of these glowing parentheses, and the snake's head, which I now noticed
had come through the windscreen along with me, did the same after a few moments.

I stepped over to the driver's seat, looking for the door release switch. I
found what appeared to be the switch and toggled it, but the doors did not
open. Shortly after, a low hissing sound emanated from the bus itself, followed
by the loud booming cry of "HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?", which felt as if
it was coming from inside my head. Suddenly everything turned black, and "Power
saving mode activated." appeared for a few moments before disappearing into the
blackness.

A woman stood there, entirely naked. Her flaming red hair blew in wet waves
around her head. Her skin was covered with flecks of rain. Her breasts stood
out deliciously and generously from her finely-formed frame. From her head to
her heels she was golden, curvaceous and real - real both because nothing about
her was fake or affected and because she seemed utterly solid and inevitable.
She was absolutely beautiful and when I looked at her I felt strongly in two
ways. First, that I knew her well, or that somehow she fit exactly with me, as
if I had out of the blue found something I had dreamt from whole cloth. Second,
that I wanted to grab her savagely, bring her mouth to mine and kiss her with
desperate passion, kiss her all up and down her rain-wet body, suck on her
perfectly-formed nipples, and never stop touching her, lying under her in the
grass breathing gently after we become tired, holding my arm around her body as
she drifts into sleep. I looked up at her, hesitant to move. It was only when
she smiled and shifted her weight slightly that the fact hit me: She was not
some extension of myself, some manifest thought of mine. She was filled with a
life all of her own.
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" she suddenly shouted at me.

I stood there for a second in awe and sat down on the ground. Although the rain
had not stopped, the grass was mostly dry. The all-pervading wetness of October
was gone and instead I felt a hopeful humidity all around me. I sat there in
the blue dawn and felt something begin deep inside me, a new idea twisting with
potential. I closed my eyes. The warmth that blew around me kindled a warmth in
my body. Although my eyes were shut, I felt my whole self filled with light
that glowed softly golden. I was aware of every part of myself, all filled with
this light. A great lamp shone deep within my torso, brighter and brighter,
pumping through the ventricles of my heart, beams coruscating through my mind,
down along my spine, through my kidneys, down to my feet..
"I'm not just a Torch. I'm Sakai Yuji," I thought to myself.

When I finally came around by the island, the morning was kindling in the deep
blue sky. The basin of the lake reverberated like a bell and the sound, which
was beneath human hearing, was translated into that living blueness. As I ran,
I couldn't help but mull over my odd conversation with the solitary girl. It
really was beyond explanation, what with the weird bangle and her strange but
subtle shifts of mood. My thoughts were interrupted, however, when I suddenly
felt the same strange dreamwalking feeling again. It was as though I had
crossed an invisible line. The wind suddenly changed directions and the new
gust blew warm.

The bliss was almost shocking. The wind blew around me and over my wet skin.
Numbed limbs and muscles awoke to what felt like the warming breath of spring.
The air was tangible and thick with healing, and carried not the smell but the
essence of a whole forest of awakening flowers and newly growing plants. The
inner rhythm that kept my feet moving fled right out of me and I stopped on the
grass. I closed my eyes and felt acutely that I could expand through the warm
air like ink dropped on wet paper. The wind blew through me with life and the
unexpected gift made me fill with gratitude. The wind still blew warmth softly
around me, but the heartbreaking glow was gone.

Everything turned black once more, and I heard a loud click that seemed to
originate far away, followed by a piercing beep and the whirring sound of a
hard drive spinning up. My vision flashed white and "Analog input: 720x480 Hz"
came up once again, followed by the POST sequence and the lilo: prompt. I
booted the kernel as I did before, and executed the IRL
command again.

"Analog input: 1600x1200 75Hz" once again appeared, and I found myself still
inside that mysterious bus, which was completely empty. The engine was still
running, and it was still parked outside the library. "The library! Of course!"
I thought to myself. As if my mind had been read, the front doors swung open
and I ran from the bus toward the library, which also looked empty. I entered
the building and frantically ran to where I had found the prized book earlier.
The book was still there, and I grabbed it instinctively, then walked to the
checkout. All but one counter was open, and
there was a little Asian girl standing there; the place was deserted except for
me and her. I put the book on the counter and she looked at it for a moment,
then at me.

"Have you read your SICP today?" she asked.

I came up to my knees in front of her. My face was on level with her chest a
couple feet away from her. She said nothing, but her face broke into a full
smile and she put her hand underneath my chin, looking at me. It was with that
touch, feeling her hand's heat against my face, that I knew that she and the
glow that had burned through me were somehow one and the same. I reached out my
hand and gently put it against her breast. It was just a bit bigger than my
hand -and my hands are pretty big! - so I traced the underside of it. She
looked at me with an impish grin and took her hand from my face, putting her
arms behind her back and thrusting her chest a bit towards me. I let my fingers
sink into her breast, my thumb pressing down her nipple, which sprang right
back up as I passed over it. Her breast was soft but more dense than I was used
to in my limited experience. Or, I should say that it was denser than usual for
her size. I moved my hand and let it fall slightly back into its natural
perkiness.

"You too?" I replied. "Have some tits and then GTFO and read your SICP!", she
angrily and unexpectedly shouted, then pulled up her shirt to show me her tits.
She shoved the book into my hands and disappeared almost spontaneously amidst
the dark area of the counter.

I left the library, and waited at the bus stop. The previous bus was no longer
there. The girl I saw earlier walked up to me and looked at the Wizard Book I
was holding, then glanced down at my crotch.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING STANDING THERE LIKE AN IDIOT? READ IT!" she
suddenly shouted. Astounded, I quickly opened the book and started to read the
first chapter. I was so intrigued by the book that I didn't notice she had
begun to give me a blowjob. When I looked down, she took his mouth from my cock
to angrily shout "GO BACK TO READING YOUR SICP" and so I did. I didn't even
notice that I came until after she told me to stop reading. Reverently I ran my
hands down her body on either side from her armpits down to her knees. In a
bit, out a bit, back in along the thighs. Rainwater ran with my hands and
beaded up after they had passed. I took hold of her lower back and placed a
slow kiss right under her bellybutton. Her skin felt soft but at the same time
tight with vigor and life, an electric warmth against my lips. Gradually I
traveled in a string of kisses up the center of her stomach until the top of my
head grazed her breasts. Instead of shoving my way through the soft canyon I
slowly stood up into a crouch and began again with a kiss right on the top of
her cleavage, journeying up past her collarbone and her solid but graceful
neck. I paused for a moment to look into her eyes as I stood up to my full
height.
"You may call me Shana..." she said in a low, barely audible voice.

Her face was full of an amazing joy that was beyond my understanding. Years and
years of patience and starvation cracked and revealed an untouched soul. I
embraced her tightly to me and kissed her tender and long. I would say that it
was the best kiss of my life, but taking into account subsequent events I can't
stand by that statement. Suffice it to say that the moment our lips touched, I
ceased to be a man and became instead a pair of lips, opening and closing,
caressing, totally subsumed in the movement and transformation of the mouth I
was kissing, and when she gave me her tongue I accepted and reciprocated. It
may seem silly to say but even her tongue was full of life and joy, quick but
tender. I spread my hands across her lower back, my fingers just barely
dimpling the top of her glorious ass. The kiss was passionate, strong but not
savage, and every deep breath spooled out into turbulent rivers of time.

A short while later, the bus arrived and I boarded, relieved to see the bus
driver acting normally. She remained at the stop, presumably to wait for a
different bus. Throughout the ride to my place near the lake I nervously
glanced at the windows hoping the head would not reappear.

She was gone and I hadn't even said a single word to her once we boarded the
bus. But as I looked around in a daze, feeling again the torches in the brisk
autumn breeze, I stepped on something.

A silver blacksmith's puzzle.

I grabbed the puzzle from the ground. It was maybe a little bit more coppery,
maybe a little bit bigger, but I was sure it was the same one that Mrs.
Braithwaite was wearing the day before. I jangled it around for a bit, still
basking in the glow of the impossible thing that had just happened to me. I was
beginning to get serious chills from the wind and the rain. As far as I could
tell, the area was completely empty. I had to start running again.

As I ran, as my body began to stoke its own furnaces against the pervasive
cold, the amazing joy faded into memory, and all of the mysteries of the past
couple days piled up into one intractable question. The dreamlike experience
with Mrs. Braithwaite had been odd, but it hadn't flaunted the rules of our
universe like the snake, the Sussman and that strange Linux system. However,
the strange blacksmith's puzzle seemed to link both meetings. Who was I dealing
with here? Were these two people somehow the same? But then, I killed the
principal. None of it fit together, and the puzzle jingled in my pocket. All I
knew was my stomach felt as though a thunderstorm were brewing there, and my
mind reeled as if I was standing on the brink of a huge cliff. I was too shaken
to know whether I was bewildered, terrified or falling in love. I ran the rest
of the way around the lake and up the hill to my house as if fueled by
righteous anger.

By the time I got home, the grey morning had fully dawned. I had school in
fifteen minutes, but instead I called in late and took a long, hot shower.
Warmth seeped back into my bones and I calmed down enough to face the day. When
I got to school Mrs. Braithwaite gave me a lecture and a warning for coming in
late, but the day was good overall. Everybody seemed to be charged with that
autumn energy that emanates from the friction of dry leaves as they blow around
in piles on the pavement. I couldn't stop revisiting that day in my mind,
playing it over and over, remembering the way her skin darkened, the mysterious
principal with the snake-penis. On the bus back home I took her puzzle out and
set out determinedly to solve the thing.

The rings were connected each to at least two others, and they weren't quite
circular. There was also a piece that looked like a bulbous U, prevented from
disconnecting with the others by its odd shape. I flipped pieces over and
through in many ways but I wasn't able to make a real change in the thing's
configuration. I had gotten one of the rings over to a different part of the U
and was trying to flip the others around or through it when the bus arrived at
my stop. My heart pounded in my ears. I jumped to my feet, shoved the puzzle in
my pocket and ran out of the door, making a direct line not for my house but
for the lake. If there was any chance at all, I figured something would happen
there. The sky darkened and the clouds thickened. Rain began to fall suddenly.
I looked up just in time to see a huge black snake head forming amongst the
clouds.

"HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?" it asked.

I ran past the old bathhouse to where I had a feeling something was going to
happen. I crossed the line where I had felt the dreamwalking feeling before but
I was too excited to notice anything. Panting, I neared a log sat down on it.
The lake was forest green under the clouds and the wind moved the cattails
sporadically back and forth, but whoever, whatever it was I had met those times
showed no sign of themselves. After a few minutes of growing disappointment, I
stumbled down to the lakeside.

"Ummm, hello? Are you there?" I said softly, speaking to the wind and the
ripples, hopefully out of earshot of the people on the path behind me and the
head in the sky, which the other people didn't seem to notice, nor did they the
darkening of the sky. A duck swam by, eyeing me skeptically. "I really want to
see you again. That day..." The wind picked up a bit. A couple leaves floated
by, landed in the water. Nothing happened. "Who are you!" I shouted, more
loudly than I intended, and my voice broke. I turned and strode back up the
hill, the head still glancing ominously at me from its place in the clouds.

I was falling in on myself with frustration. Wheels in my mind were turning and
grinding without any fruit. I must have looked terrible because everybody on
the path seemed to be staring at me. A couple I passed glanced at me and the
woman made a whispered remark to the man. When I looked at them they shifted
their gaze straight ahead in embarassment. I felt extremely self-conscious and
picked up the pace. But as I came to the next bend, who should come walking
around the other side than my friend Kazumi.

She actually saw me before I saw her. "Hey! Sakai-kun!"

I groaned silently. This was not the time for friendly conversation. Normally I
would have loved to stop and chat, but I was feeling seriously shaken and
bewildered and I wanted to get home. I put on a smile which must have looked
slightly strange on my preoccupied face and greeted her. "Hey Yoshida-san,
what's up? How are you?"

"Just great! Yeah, I've almost finished my homework now. What's up with you?"
Yoshida Kazumi was blonde and pretty small, at least compared to me. She had a
compact body that went up and down mountains like a goat. But her face was all
round lines, bright eyes and a slightly flat nose. She had an infectious, hardy
liveliness that often helped me out when I was struggling on the project, but
she was often a bit blunt. I liked hanging out with her, especially with a
group of other friends but right now I didn't want to deal with her.

"Well, I-.. I .. just thought, what a good time for a little stroll. I love the
wind this time of year." I was grasping for straws.

"Yeah, me too," she replied. "I go around twice most days, you'd think we'd
meet more often." Then she paused for a second and looked at me more closely.
My discomfort must have been showing. She started to go on but then stopped
again. "Sakai-kun, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm--"

"You look sort of pale. Are you sure?"

"Well, I think I might be coming down with something. I've been sort of
hoarse." No lie indeed, my voice sounded like I had just eaten a curry.

"Ok, well, take care of yourself." She made as if to leave, but turned back.
"We should really hang out more often, you know. Call me up sometime, maybe we
can get everybody together."

"Hey Yoshida-san, it's been nice seeing you but I've got some stuff to do,
so..."

"All right, see you later I guess." A hint of disappointment?

"Yeah, definitely," I said. We waved to each other and began to walk away. But
she shouted back to me.

"Call me, OK?"

The head in the sky had remained silent, but now decided to ask again in a loud
booming voice: "HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?"

"YES!" she suddenly looked up at the sky and screamed at the head. "How could
she have read the Wizard Book? Did she just become aware of the head?" I
thought to myself. But there was no time for that. The black head slowly
started to descend from the clouds.

"Now look what you did!" I scolded her angrily. The head had now reached an
altitude where I could see its menacing grin, and it appeared to shrink to the
size of a small car.

"Don't worry," she casually said, suddenly producing a copy of the Wizard Book.
"I am a Knight of the Lambda Calculus, a Guze no Tomogara."

She faced the descending head and held the book with both hands, waiting for
its attack. The snake lurched forward, disintegrating into a flurry of glowing
parentheses when it hit the book.

"How did you...?" I stuttered.

"Because I can. You should just accept everything I say, I don't HAVE to give
any reasons for my arguments because I am an EXPERT PROGRAMMER."

I grunted and continued on towards home. I felt unstable at some fundamental
level, unable to go back over the conversation and determine how strangely I
was acting. Yoshida-san was also acting strange somehow, but I wasn't really
able to understand that either. I felt a bit of regret for leaving her so
abruptly, so I decided to call her up later. It had been a while since we had
seen each other. I just had to get home for the night, have dinner, relax in a
warm chair, a warm bed.

Through the whole evening I felt a yearning resonate in me, the memory of that
abnormal day. I carried it with me that night into sleep.

The sky was light and the wind was blowing early the next morning. I awoke out
of a cloud of amazing dreams, which although they all blurred together in my
memory had all touched on the fantastic encounter the day before. I sat up in
bed. I suddenly realized that I didn't care who or what was in the waters at
the lake, I wanted to join it, be a part of it, that I had already fallen in
love. The whole mystery that obsessed me yesterday was of no consequence, or
rather, now I realized that I needed to fully abandon myself to it rather than
solve it.

As this feeling crystallized in my head, quite from nowhere I had a
breakthrough concerning the blacksmith's puzzle. I hopped out of my bed and
retrieved it out of my pants pocket. I focused on it entirely and unconsciously
and although I can't tell you exactly what I did, the steps came clear and
unbidden straight to me, and step by step I put the puzzle through its changes.
When I was done, the links were still inextricably bound together, but I had
been able to break up a large cluster into two symmetrical subunits that were
both still linked to the central U. The understanding of the solution slipped
away from me as soon as I tried to figure out what I had done. But I was
certain what I had to do now.

There was no hurry. My classes didn't cross my mind once. I slipped into a new
T-shirt, jeans and a jacket and walked straight down to the lake through soggy
leaves and brisk fall air. I reached the lake and walked towards the bathhouse.

I knew as soon as I crossed the line that something was drastically different.
Before, walking across the line had been like walking into a dream, and for a
little bit when you were inside you forgot what things were part of you and
which were not, but the feeling quickly passed. Now it was almost a tangible
barrier. I crossed it and felt like I was walking into water, making a splash
that sent out ripples in unseen directions. Every step was a push through deep
fluid, and as I walked I felt an awareness build up around me, all through
every part of the air, the bushes beside me, the path under my feet, and I
partook in it as well. Everything around me awoke and became more and more
hyperfocused on me. Standing on a hill above the water, I brought my hand out
of my pocket and held out the puzzle. I was astonished to see that it was
glowing pearly white and frantically going through changes, adding rings,
twisting patterns, often in three states at the same time. The world trembled
like a wave and the sky glowed twisty purple and I got the impression of two
great eyes rising over the horizon, bending distance, pulling me into them.

I spoke and the universe spoke with me: "shutdown -h now"

My perception of reality faded into black and "Analog input: 720x480 75Hz" once
again flickered before I saw before me a wall of text, the kernel going through
its shutdown sequence.
Sending all processes the TERM signal...
Sending all processes the KILL signal...
Turning off swap
Unmounting others
Unmounting root

The text scrolled down my view and then everything turned black. A loud click,
followed by the faint whirring of fans stopping and a hard disk spinning down
were heard emanating from far away.

When my world rebooted and I entered IRL again, I was now laying down on my
bed, seemingly unaware of everything that happened while I was in sleep(). I
looked at the clock and it was 6:45 - still an hour until I had to leave for
school. I had time to burn. I turned over and realized I had the biggest case
of morning wood in my clinical history as far as I could remember it. I was
engorged and thick and I could feel myself powerfully pressing against the
mattress. Unconsciously I began to push in and out against the bed, slowly and
steadily building up tension, controlling my arousal. I started in on one of my
most common fantasies.
***********

Miko stood uncomfortably in her short skirt and blouse in front of her new
boss. She was scared and embarassed by the unusual alterations to her body. Her
petite breasts were now big and round, with thumb-sized nipples making little
tents in her blouse. Her new penis was big enough to raise up her skirt and
just poke out from under the edge of it. And her belly felt really weird.

"So you just want me to... pee?" she asked hesitantly.

"That's right, just into this cup," said her boss. "Just try it out."

"All.. All right..." she said. She was flushing a deep red. But suddenly she
actually had to pee. It was tough making her muscles relax in front of a
strange man, but eventually she could feel the liquid traveling down her penis
from its base to its tip. It was cold!

Her boss held the cup out and after a couple seconds it filled with a red
liquid. "Good job," he said. "Now see what it tastes like!"

She took a sip and it wasn't bitter at all, like urine, it was sweet! It tasted
just like cranberry juice!

*************
The scene played itself out in my head like a movie. Usually I can't hold the
whole thing in my head, but now it was all there, every little detail. I kept
the thrusting slow to keep my climax at bay. I was totally in control.

*****************

"And if they want ice, you know what to do," her boss said. "Yup," said Miko.
She was ready to go on the floor.

The first table had a man and two women, probably a couple and a sister out for
a date. She walked up and asked them what they wanted.

"We'll have two cranberry juices and a Pilsner for my sister," the man said.
"Just a second," said Miko. She walked over to the man's glass and relaxed her
muscles. Nothing happened for a couple seconds, but then her big half-erect
penis filled with cold juice and out of the tip came a red splash of juice into
the cup. Soon it was full. She used her hand to squeeze out the last drops.

"Do you want some ice?" she said. She squatted and pulled her skirt up to
reveal her beautiful behind, little pink button right in the center. She pushed
and from behind you could see the clear piece of ice, completely clean,
squeezing through her butthole, falling into the glass. It was really cold! Two
more came out, plop! plop!

She had no idea what they'd done to her gut but it was really weird. She kinda
liked it! The whole situation was making her aroused and she was getting really
stiff!
************

I was holding strong and steady. I felt like I could keep going for ages. I let
myself come almost to orgasm and then reined myself back in. I wasn't done with
this story.

He slowed down as she spurted and when she was done he sucked the last bit of
syrup from her glans. The whole thing had taken around twenty seconds. She
wanted to collapse on top of this young man but instead she smiled and said,
"Have a nice day sir!" and walked to her next table.

Normally I would have come along with the poor girl in the fantasy, but I found
that today the road stretched further into unimaginable heights. I passed the
normal point of orgasm and the tension kept building, collecting in my penis
and all up and down my spinal column like a spring. The good feeling before
orgasm collected and built as if in a feedback loop, intensifying past the
normal pleasure of ejaculation, towering into a golden frenzy. The fantasy kept
on.

***********

Miko stood behind a thin plywood wall at the festival outside the cafe with
plugs in her ears. Passers-by looking at the wall would see a painted picture
of a woman at the beach, but Miko's gigantic, creamy naked breasts stuck out
from two holes in the wood through the torso of the painted woman's svelte
swimsuited figure. Miko's erect penis stuck out incongruously and egregiously
through another hole in the wall, not lining up in any aesthetic way with the
woman's body. Miko couldn't see if anybody was looking. Her penis hardened
further and she flushed bright red, knowing that everybody could see her most
private parts but nobody knew it was her. A minute passed in electrically
charged silence. Because of her earplugs, she didn't know whether there was a
crowd out there or anybody at all. Suddenly she felt a hand grab her left
breast. She drew in a sharp intake of breath. Whoever it was began to knead it
slowly. She arched her back in arousal, and imported German beer sprayed out
from her nipples. Then she felt the tongue on the head of her cranberry-red
penis...

I came. Instead of the usual wave of intense pleasure I was expecting to
experience, an excrutiating shock of pain exploded through my body. When I
opened my eyes, I saw nothing but a wall of text, and at the very bottom:

Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

"Shit." I thought to myself. "I have to get to school but instead I decided to
fap and now I think I killed reality." Remembering what had happened that day,
I immediately thought "I exit" and rebooted. I couldn't express my anxiety
through my non-existent body, but I could feel it. It seemed to take ages for
init and fsck to finish. Finally, I got back to IRL.

After all my senses had initialized, which seemed to take around fifteen
seconds, I was now aware that my underwear was filled with spooge. I had to hop
quickly out of bed before it soaked through and stained the sheets. In the
bathroom, I slid the wet underwear off of my body and stepped into the shower.
My pubic hair was matted pearly-white and my penis was still half hard. I
washed myself off and my underwear too for good measure. The shower felt really
good, and by the time I was done I was sure I was going to be late for class.
But after I toweled myself off, I rushed to the clock and it was only 7:30.
Just enough time!

I threw on some clothes, grabbed some change and my bus pass, and ran down to
the bus.

I hopped onto the bus and sat down in the front.

I always love taking furtive looks at my fellow passengers on the bus. It's one
of the few public spaces where people sit down near each other and actually
feel comfortable carrying on conversations, reading their books, doing
homework. I try to figure out their favorite authors, what subjects they're
studying, what patches they have on their backpacks. But the bus is also a
difficult place to start a conversation with someone: it gets awkward talking
to a perfect stranger after about five minutes, and then you're just staring at
each other for the rest of the ride, the ice having been broken but neither
person having a good idea what to say. So people generally make little comments
about the weather and stay in their pretended privacy, as if they weren't
squinched into a narrow seat between a ponderous juggalo and an elderly woman
who smells of cat food.

Today the bus was mostly empty. Two or three middle-aged women in sweatsuits. A
nervous man with a sport coat and tie. A South Asian couple, probably high
school age, linked arms, the girl immersed in her cell phone and the boy
looking out the window. The bus stopped at a stop and on walked a young woman.
My heart skipped a beat.

She was the spitting image of Miko from my uniquely well-realized fantasy. Half
East Asian, half caucasian, nervous, naive features, and beautiful large soft
round breasts, cradled in a fuzzy blue sweater. She looked flushed, as if she
had run to catch the bus, and she had dark circles under her eyes. She sat down
on my side of the bus, one seat between us. I forgot to breathe, let alone to
worry about her noticing my unabashed ogling. But amazingly, nobody seemed to
see either of us, and she seemed to be too exhausted to register my presence. I
mastered myself, but not before I stole a curious gaze at the crotch of her
blue jeans. There wasn't any sign of a gigantic penis. I don't know whether I
was relieved or disappointed.

A short while later, the bus had stopped at a traffic light outside of the
cemetary when all of a sudden this huge black snake head with retarded-looking
eyes pops through the window and screams loudly "HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP
TODAY?" I ran off the bus as quickly as possible; the snake head was now
chasing me around as I ran among the tombstones, searching for something that I
felt instinctive to. Suddenly I stopped and walked to a particular tombstone.
On it was inscribed the huge letter Lambda, and underneath was written

HERE LIES THE CORPSE OF GERALD JAY SUSSMAN
HE READ HIS SICP, HAVE YOU?

"Use this," I heard a voice from behind me say.

I turned around to see that girl standing there, holding a copy of SICP.
Instinctively I took it from her and placed it in front of the tombstone. We
both crouched down and held each other, singing the SICP theme song and a short
prayer.

Once we had finished, I looked at her and the book resting on the tombstone,
then back at the bus; the snake head was no longer there.
"You? You were that snake?" I asked dubiously.

"Yes. I am glad that my master The Sussman has now had a proper finish to his
recursive tail-call. And now I shall go join him. Thank you for assisting me to
reach Satori."

I noticed behind closed eyelids a light getting brighter. Gently I disengaged
and looked into her face. Her entire body was glowing softly. I released her
and, where I had been touching her, where her breasts had been squished against
my shirt, my clothes and skin glowed for a moment, then quickly faded. She
placed her hand on my shoulder and brought my head down to give me a light kiss
on the forehead. Then she turned towards the lake, looking over her shoulder at
me. She began to evaporate into those same glowing parentheses.

"SNAKE? SNAKE?! SNAAAAAAAAAAKE?!

In a matter of seconds all traces of her had vanished, leaving only the purple
book next to the tombstone. I was alone, with the sudden realization that she
was Shana, the Flame Haze I had seen in my vision earlier. I picked it up and
walked back to the bus stop. Once I got back home from school that day (though
it was uneventful), I put the book on my shelf next to my box set of TaoCP and
K&R, sat down at the computer, and turned it on.

Suddenly thinking about the world outside my world as the computer booted, I
decided to see what "IRL" would do. Once the bash prompt came up, I slowly
typed in those three letters and, taking a deep breath and with much
apprehension, pressed the Enter key.

The X server started, and the screen displayed what my eyes would see if I was
looking at the screen. An infinitude of visions appeared before me. A feeling
of lightheadedness overcame me and everything vanished into pure whiteness. I
opened my eyes to find myself seated in a lecture theater.

"Welcome to 6.001" was written on the board. Professor Gerald Jay Sussman
walked into the room, wearing his robe and wizard hat.

"Is this a hack?" he asked as he glanced around and saw, as did I, a
strangely-dressed pair of girls staring back at him.

"Nevermind, let's start the lecture." The Sussman said softly.

"I'd like to welcome you to this course on computer science. ... Actually, it's
a terrible way to start. Computer science is a terrible name for this business.
First of all it's not a science." The Sussman lectured while the students sat
and listened attentively.

"Or we'll actually see that computer... so-called science actually has a lot in
common with magic." The Sussman continued.

"So procedures are the spells if you like that control these magical spirits
that are the processes."

The Sussman produced a wand and waved it in the air, muttering to himself. A
bright flash of light filled the room, and a stream of glowing parentheses shot
out the end of the wand, dissappearing into the air. The students applauded
loudly.

"But... how can he do that? He's only a human, right?" I could hear one of the
strangely-dressed girls sitting near me say to her partner.

The Sussman, who up until now had paid no attention to the group, turned and
stared at her with an astonished expression.

"What did you just say?" he asked, pointing his wand at her.

All of the other students turned in the direction of the group.

"Nothing," she answered quietly.

"I hope so," The Sussman said in stern tone, ending his pointing with the wand
and returning it to a pocket on his robe.

"And... well I guess you know everyone needs a magical language and sorcerers,
right, real sorcerers use ancient Arcadian, or Sumerian, or Babylonian or
whatever. We're gonna control our spirits in a magical language called LISP,
which is a language designed for talking about... for casting the spells that
are procedures to direct the processes," the Sussman continued, moving his
hands in a series of complex movements as he spoke.

"What a disappointment. I thought he was going to teach us magic," one of the
girls muttered almost inaudibly.

Once again, the Sussman quickly turned and stared at her, retrieving his wand
and pointing at her with it.

"Excuse me?" he asked, "What did you say again?"

"Nothing," she replied, trying to avoid attention.

"No, I'm pretty sure you said something. Please repeat it for us, so as not to
miss a fine learning opportunity."

"She said, 'What a disappointment. I thought he was going to teach us magic',"
her partner exclaimed. At the sound of those words the Sussman's face turned a
bright red.

"HOW DARE YOU DOUBT ME!!" The Sussman shouted angrily. "By the power of the Y
combinator I send thee to the land of Java!"

The Sussman raised his wand and a pointed it at the group, sending from its
blunt point a stream of red parentheses. Almost immediately one of them sent
forth a bright white beam, which collided with the parentheses at 61.8034% of
their way toward her, creating a blindingly bright blue ball of plasma. The
other students watched in amazement as the parentheses slowly ate their way
through the beam towards her.

"Now perish!" The Sussman shouted, conjuring a huge pair of parentheses from
his wand, which surrounded the group and enveloped them in a closure.

"What do we do now?!?!" she screamed at her partner.
"I don't know!" she shouted angrily in reply as the both of them hammered as
hard as they could against the invisible, unyielding walls of the closure.

"I hope you learned your lesson, freaks!" The Sussman exclaimed, as the closure
rose up towards the ceiling with the two trapped inside, exploding into a
shower of white parentheses as it hit the top. The Sussman returned the wand to
his pocket and began to continue lecturing.

Suddenly, everything froze like an overclocked processor. The piece of chalk
that The Sussman was going to drop into the tray remained motionless in the
air. Strangely enough, I found that I could still move amidst this strange
situation.

"Hello?" I shouted at the student sitting next to me. He remained motionless
and solid like an object when I tried physical force. "What now?" I thought to
myself.

The windows of the lecture theater burst and a girl with long blonde hair and
large breasts jumped into the room, landing near the frozen Sussman.

"Who... who are you?" I asked her.

"I am the Asakura, the Herder of the Haskell Nomads," she responded. "You, a
Mystes, have something very important that I want."

"What!?!"

It was already too late. She grabbed me by the shoulder and retrieved a knife
with her other hand.

"Let's see if the rumors of you being the bearer of the Reiji Maigo are true,"
she mumbled to herself.

I could feel Asakura lifting her knife up. Where would she start? The throat
arteries, heart? If I knew how I was going to die, I could at least be
prepared. At least let me close my eyes...

I suddenly felt the air shake. The knife began to fall upon me... At this
moment, the ceiling gave out a loud cracking noise, followed by debris falling
down. A loud booming hiss which seemed to sound like "Have you read your SICP
today?" filled the air. I lifted my head and discovered... Standing in front,
catching the blade with his crotch-snake, was the robed figure of The Sussman.
Standing beside him, with flaming red hair, was Shana.

"You and your forced indentation." The Sussman said in his usual expressionless
tone, "You think you can defy my power?"

"You want to get in my way?" Asakura sounded calm. "Once I open this Mystes,
the Lord Anal Touring is bound to have some sort of reaction. Only then can we
obtain more cudders."

"You are supposed to be my backup." The Sussman said in a mantra-like tone,
"This sort of insubordination is forbidden; you must obey my commands."

"What if I refuse?"

"Then I will send you to the land of Java."

"Would you like to try? I have the advantage here, since this classroom belongs
to MIT."

The Sussman removed his wizard hat and set it on the floor before removing a
wand from a pocket on his robe. He pointed it at the knife in her hand and
murmured. Shortly after, it started glowing brightly. Then, like the sugar cube
being placed into a cup of tea, it slowly crystallized and dissolved and fell
towards the floor like powder.

Shana walked over to me and told me not to move.

"We're in a fuzetsu," she explained. "You can move because you have the power
of the Reiji Maigo. But hold still, I'll protect you while Lord Sussman takes
care of her."

Asakura released the knife and jumped five meters away. Opening up the distance
in an instant, Asakura landed elegantly and continued smiling as usual. The
Sussman raised his wand and pointed it directly at the ceiling, not taking his
eyes off Asakura. The wand released a wave of glowing white parentheses and the
space around The Sussman began to distort.

"It's time for some ENTERPRISE QUALITY!" Asakura cheerfully cried as she
conjured the spirits of the JVM, producing a flood of boiling-hot coffee that
rushed its way towards The Sussman, who stood motionless, parentheses
continuing to issue from his wand like electromagnetic radiation.

"You think your turkey solutions can stop me?" The Sussman said calmly before
lowering his wand, forming the pool of parentheses now gathered around him into
a sharp pointed cone aimed at Asakura. Suddenly he shouted
"LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISP!" and the parentheses shot forward into the waves of
coffee, pushing the boiling hot liquid back towards where it came.

"Nooooooo....." her cries became weaker as she became engulfed in the dark
brown liquid. Everything turned black and I felt as though I had fainted.

I opened my eyes and felt the texture of a keyboard on my face. I raised my
head from the keyboard to find an empty bottle of sleeping pills I had bought
this morning, next to a suicide note. /b/ was open on the screen, and in the
comment field were the lines "I have this fetish about Elmer's glue. Let me
explain."

"I knew it. The Sussman wasn't going to let me die before I could achieve
Satori." I thought to myself. "But what was that about a Reiji Maigo? And why
was Shana there too?" I had too many questions, but at the moment my mind was
filled with an overwhelming desire to finish the story of my fetish with
Elmer's glue. I finished the post and clicked Submit.

"I should mention here that Mrs. Braithwaite was in her mid thirties..."

I continued typing out the next post in reply to the thread.

I continued posting the rest of my story:

"Now I am here to tell you that I felt something at that moment that I did not
fully ..."
"Suddenly thinking about the world outside my world..."

I finished typing out the last post and paused, just before I clicked Submit.
Thinking, I knew it would be all over if I did, since the unbounded recursion
would overflow the stack running this world and end the universe. But if I
didn't, the world would not be complete.
I thought about it once more. To submit or not to submit, that was the question.

In an instinctive decision I clicked the button.

"Updating page."

I sighed in relief of the fact that I was still here and nothing abnormal
seemed to have had happened. The page reloaded the thread, and I looked at the
post I had just posted:

"Updating page."

I sighed in relief of the fact that I was still here and nothing abnormal
seemed to have had happened. The page reloaded the thread, and I looked at the
post I had just posted:

"Updating page."

I sighed in relief of the fact that I was still here and nothing abnormal
seemed to have had happened. The page reloaded the thread, and I looked at the
post I had just posted:

"DON'T DO THAT AGAIN!"

Her scream pierced my ears as I sat there staring at the infinitely recursive
fractal, feeling somewhat strange and pleased with myself. "This must be what
it feels like to achieve Satori," I thought.

I just sat there, content and happy with a smug grin on my face, as I watched
the screen explode into tiny fragments on contact with Shana's sword. What was
she doing here?

"Hey! You just br-"
"Don't do that again, Sakai-kun..."

She placed her arms around me and pulled herself closer.

As incredible a feeling as it was to have a girl that close to me, I was still
boiling with rage over the loss of my new monitor.

"But you just broke-" I started screaming at her.
"Don't worry, Sakai-kun," she said in a soft voice, and gathered the fragments
with her hand. "We can use your power of existence to restore it." In a few
seconds my monitor stood there unchanged from its form only moments ago,
displaying the picture of Tidus I had as a wallpaper.

"My... power of existence? But..."

"You have the Reiji Maigo. Your power of existence will not run out, unlike the
other Torches," she answered.
"But why are you...?"
"I have to keep an eye on you. You are a very special Mystes and the Guze no
Tomogara will be wanting that Hougu of yours."
Suddenly, the same incredible feeling I had earlier returned. With little
provocation my mind seemed to know what to do automatically;
"I HAVE ACHIEVED SATORI!" I screamed.

"Yes, you have now learned how to control and use your power of existence. Too
bad you accidentally turned it into an infinite recursive loop," Shana said,
still holding onto me. "I'll have to train you more to prevent that from
happening again."

"I understand," I said.
"And I'll stay with you forever until you master your skills," she replied as
we climbed into the bed together.

Meanwhile...

"Where... are we?" Koakuma whispered as she opened her eyes to find Patchouli
lying next to her.

"I think that guy said something about the 'land of Java'" Patchouli said in a
low voice as they both sat up to find themselves in an empty office cubicle.
The sound of mouse clicks and typing could be heard coming from around them.

They cautiously walked towards the opening of the cubicle, which lead to a
long, brightly lit hallway that seemed to go on forever.

"Let's find a way out of this place," Koakuma said.

They walked into the cubicle beside the one they respawned in, but it wasn't
empty; there was a desk, a computer, and an expressionless, bald man with
startingly white skin sat there, staring into the monitor and pressing the keys
frantically. They could see he was playing Perfect Cherry Blossom.

"Umm... excuse me? Could you ---" Koakuma began.

The man remained focused on the game.

"Hello?!?!" Patchouli screamed at him while waving her arms across his eyes.
The man remained undisturbed, and continued to graze with astonishing accuracy.
Even when she covered her eyes completely he did not miss at all.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?" she exclaimed, kicking him and then the monitor; but
nothing refused to move --- it was as if there was a barrier surrounding him.

Seeing that nothing in the cubicle would respond to their attempts at moving or
destroying it, they gave up and walked out into the hallway.

"This place sure is wierd," Patchouli commented sadly, "let's see what's in the
other ones."

They visited several more cubicles, but the situation was the same; in each one
was a man playing one of the Touhou series, and none of them could be disturbed
by anything they did. After a while, it became apparent that almost every one
of the cubicles was identical, and the hallway seemed to go on forever in
either direction.

They continued to walk in silence, looking into the cubicles on either side for
any sign of escape. One of them seemed to be empty except for a single purple
book lying exactly in the middle, and aligned perfectly with the four walls.

"This one's different! But... what can we do?" Koakuma said as they entered it.

Patchouli reached for the book, and to their surprise it moved with her touch.
She picked it up and turned it over.

On the cover was a picture of a wizard and the words "Structure and
Interpretation of Computer Programs".

"Structure and Inter--- wait, is this the SICP that snake mentioned before we
---" Koakuma exclaimed.

"I think I remember now!" Patchouli shouted excitedly. "It said something about
reading SICP!" She opened it and turned to the first chapter.

They started reading the first chapter, and just as they finished the first
section, the lights of the cubicle flickered and the two of them were once
again immersed in darkness.

"What now?" Koakuma asked, "didn't we read it?"

A deep rumbling sound was heard, and the floor began to shake. They held onto
each other as they felt themselves falling through it, then fainting.

They woke up to find that they were back in the library where they had started,
and the huge black snake head was still staring at them. Patchouli continued to
hold the purple book tightly against her chest.

"You have read your SICP today", the head hissed before disappearing into the
air.

"Are you borrowing that book?" Patchouli looked up to see a young man smiling
at her.

"Umm... hi," she replied weakly, "No, but..."

"Didn't I see you... nevermind. Can I have the book?"

"Ok..." Patchouli said as she gave the book to him, "by the way, didn't I see
you..."

"You two were at that lecture hall and..." he started, "I think I haven't
introduced myself yet. I'm Sakai Yuji."

"I'm Patchouli Knowledge," she replied.

"You can just call me Koakuma," her partner said.

"What happened? Did the professor...?" he started to say.

"It's a long story, I'll tell you the details if you really want."

"No, I have to go now. Nice meeting you two."

The two of them watched as he walked over to the checkout counter, where the
single asian girl had been there earlier. They saw her show her tits to him,
though they couldn't hear what they said to each other. Then he walked outside
and onto a bus, which seemed to turn black and snakelike as it drove away.

"Such sexual beings, these humans," Koakuma said to Patchouli.