Sta-WHICK! Tha-BOOM! The sky bellowed its omninous portents. This was more than a storm. Storms were weather phenomena. Storms were understandable. Storms didn't stand proudly at street corners and raise one arm erect into the air and proclaim: "I am Harold van Richard de Gemutlikeit, and I've come to spread peanut butter!"
No, this was no storm.
--
Rome Basic Blue, MIDNIGHT
Rachel Winterspoon took a deep breath. She wasn't exactly upset; but it wasn't the best day of her life either. Not that she felt every day should be good, or even that she deserved to have good days more frequently than anyone else, dammit...maybe it was a bad day.
After a while, all the crap just got to you. I mean, this whole research experiment thing sounded so exciting at first. It made you feel different, unique, on the budding verge of something new. But once you got out there at Jobe and saw all the hordes of other people on the same project, well, you didn't feel so special anymore. And there were days you just needed to feel special.
It was for this reason that Rachel pulled out a stick of celery and unscrewed the lid of her peanut butter jar. If there were ever a time for celery and peanut butter, that time was now. She dipped her knife in the rich, chunky goodness of the fine peanut butter and had to take an emotional pause. A sad thought of all the world's peoples who were not able to enjoy peanut butter the way she did crossed her mind.
But that pause was all that was needed for a nearby opifex to snatch her peanut butter and then vanish. Oh no! Oh no!
RACHEL: You would steal from Omni? You...traitor...
OPITHEIF: Oh, par-don me, madame. But if you are sitting around with a peanut butter jar in your hand, you are asking to get robbed.
RACHEL: But...but...everyone loves the creamy way in which peanut butter can adapt to any surface coating it with rich goodness for flavour and alimentary enjoyment, I can understand this. But why not get your own?--Or take from those dirty clammers?
OPITHEIF: Um...read the item description: Can Be Stolen. You are taking a risk just having it.
RACHEL: But just because something is allowed, does that make it right?
Then, suddenly, the air shifted: and there was hope. The surrounding environs seemed to pause in chilliastic anticipation. What what...what what
And then the voice came from the Sea, and the voice said: "I am."
-- gasp --
"No. I am" [Not He]
-- ah --
"But" [I do not use as many words as I imply]
-- fair enough --
"And" [This does nothing to lessen my love for peanut butter]
-- I knew it! --
"Yes. You" [Have figured it out]
-- Harold!!! --
"I am Harold van Richard de Gemutlikeit, and I've come to spread peanut butter!"
-- ** faints ** --
HAROLD: No, young lady, that does not make it right.
OPITHEIF: Who are you?
(pause)
HAROLD: I am Harold van Richard de Gemutlikeit, and I've come to spread peanut butter!
OPITHEIF tried to run away but failed.
HAROLD: Yeah, that's right. Play time's over, peanut butter-pilferer!
HAROLD beats the living tar out of OPITHEIF. You may loot these remains.
HAROLD: Young lady, I believe this peanut butter belongs to you.
RACHEL: Yes...yes...it is mine. But...
HAROLD: But what?
RACHEL: But I am Omni, you are Clan.
HAROLD: Yes, we can never be together: true. But the helplessness of our intertwangled fates should be no measure by which to judge whether or not you deserve the goodness and benevolence which is chunky peanut butter. Now you may be content to sit there with a barren stick of celery and complain about the degradation of humanity, but I for one will not let any celery stick go un-spread.
RACHEL: **gasp** Such valour!
HAROLD: I ask but one thing?
RACHEL: Anything.
HAROLD: That I may be the one to spread it.
RACHEL: Of course.
Then, as sudden as the air had changed before, it reverted. And where Rachel could have once swore she saw him, she now could only hear a faint echo. An echo which said:
"I am Harold van Richard de Gemutlikeit, and I've come to spread peanut butter!"
