Chapter One: The Reckoning

A young man named Aspartame looked out from the street corner (not for the first time). His eyes shattered the windows of the nearby shops, peaking desperately into their depths. His Golden Lucky One Official Cigrette dropped from his month. He was just a witness.

He took to walking, briskly then more relaxed. Nowhere to be, nothing to see. His eyes lighted upon a café. It's was montag café, the café he had heard everything about. Would he go in? No, he couldn't, not today. He had some thinking to do with his friend Stacily. She was always trying to get him to think with her.

He continued sauntering, one foot two foot. He pulled his Marconitron Handheld Personal Hand Radio from his dark limited edition overcoat. It softly booted up while he waited with the patience of every experience radio listener. He tuned it to his favorite megastation. They were playing 525 Hz like usual. All the big megastations only played the most popular tones. He wished they would play something exciting like 2600 Hz, but he knew they wouldn't. Kids these days were too soft, and anyway the city couldn't afford any more outages. He'd have to make due with these subpar tones until he could get home to his Karl Ferdinand Braun Sliding-Door Kitchen SuperRadio.

Aspartame's journey was only yet to start beginning.

He shoved his Marconitron Handheld Personal Hand Radio into his regulation haversack. He felt the soft whir as his motorheelies booted up. He was about to ride in style and he knew it.

He pressed GO, zooming through the streets like a cat off its leash, nothing could stop him now! Whim, wham, and all the other noises as his motorheelies scraped the smooth smooth pavement. This was the life of speed.

He scooched on up to Stacily's humble abode. It was painted with all the colors, like a professional might paint a castle. What a ritzy life she led, Aspartame thought to himself. He had started the thinking before he even knocked on the door it seems.

Stacily opens the door. Soft sound, sweet swing, creek of a hinge and then another. What a song her front door sang. Stacily had on bright cotton candy colored striped rainbow leg warmers with little bows all over covering every square decimeter. The rest of her outfit was uneventful.

"Oh yes the thinking begins," she said in her silly sing-song of a voice. "Have you prepared your mind cells for what we're about to do?"

Aspartame guffawed. "No one could ever be prepared for what we're about to do."

They sat on her kitchen floor, obviously recently swept. It had the clean scent of a floor that had been recently swept. It had the shine of a floor that had been recently swept. What a lucky broom.

They sat on her kitchen floor facing away from each other. It was time it was now. They started the think.

Moments passed and then hours. It was evening now, the kind of evening where the sun dipped low in the sky and you could almost feel its warmth on the horizon. Sweet colors filled the sky, reds and blues and purples. It reminded Aspartame of a set of pastels his sister had growing up. They were all such pleasant shades. He envied those pastels and dreamed of the day he might have a set of beautiful pastels of his very own. One day, his sister saw him eyeing them and he worried she would get defensive and hide her pastels away and he would never see them again. He was wrong though. She just smiled and opened the box. After taking taking all the standard oaths and promises of a polite borrower-to-be, she pressed the wooden box into his outstretched palms. He found a piece of very nice artist's grade paper. He knew he had been saving it for something. He slowly pulled a blue pastel from the box with all the care he could muster. He touched it to the paper, feeling the soft pigment againt the rough paper. He slid it across the sheet, making the most beautiful line of color he had ever seen. Over the next hour he methodically drew, sliding more pastels out of the box as he needed them. When he was done, a beautiful landscape sat on his writing desk. What a wonder to behold. He quietly place the pastels back in the box, making sure they were all in the right order. He solemnly returned the pastels to his sister. He knew he wouldn't be needing the pastels again. His dream had finally been realized. Sitting on Stacily's kitchen floor he felt all of this, the pastels sliding across the paper, the kindness of his sister, and the joy he felt in his heart that fateful evening as he finished his landscape.

He quietly thanked Stacily for all of the thinking they had done, and he slipped out her front door. All they left each other with was a wave and new sense of connectedness. He knew he wouldn't need his motorheelies getting home. He would enjoy the long walk.