In the Province of Stochioslovania, in the Kingdom of Chemistravinth, in the world of Formulakinschtok, an agitated, frustrated, and rather worried, yet still merry female sidekick stood watch over a motionless mound of blankets. "Wake up, you stupid lout!" she called merrily as she pelted the unmoving mass with small glass marbles. "You’ve been asleep for nearly three weeks and I won’t stand for it!"
Seeing that her assertion had no effect, Gregoria (for that was the name of the usually merry female sidekick) fixed her Imposing Stare (patent pending) upon the lump in bed. "Fine, I give up. Let the world go to Gongroth," she said evenly. "But there are people out in the township of Topper that need saving, especially from the Ambivalent Suluclac Koob, whose powers are currently being used for great malice and trouble!"
The blanket-wrapped man, who happened to be Avogadro, champion of Stochiosylvania, defeater of the dreaded Lehcar the Guttre, bringer of Peace, Land, and Bread, rolled over and mumbled, "We’ve never defeated malice and trouble, only evil and mischief," then snored loudly. Gregoria left in a merry huff.
Avogadro awoke at 8:15 AM, Eastern Standard Time the next day (which meant that in Chemistravinth, it was roughly three in the afternoon). "Where am I?" he demanded of no one in particular. "I was having the most lovely dream," he continued, "I was in France..."
Luckily Avogadro did not get a chance to relate his dream because the thing that had bothered his mind enough to wake him up came back to the forefront of it. "Holy Newip!" he exclaimed (a newip is much like a cow), "someone’s gotten hold of the Ambivalent Suluclac Koob and is using it to create malice and trouble! Gregoria!!!!!!!!!!"
At the mention of her name, Gregoria came running cheerfully into the room. "It’s about time," she said.
"The time has come again," intoned Avogadro, "to return to smiting things!"
Gregoria was nonplused yet merry. "Yay," she said. "You need a shave."
And with that they were off.
Avogadro and Gregoria trekked past the crags of Ay’bee and other dangers only to find that the small township of Topper had moved. "Whoops," said Gregoria, "my map’s a year old. This won’t do." So they promptly turned their Lo Los around (I do hope that you know what a Lo Lo is by now) and reversed course and had many adventures which weren’t all that exciting; except for maybe the time they ran into the dreaded cult of Biff Teboshay, their attempt to sneak past the monstrous (well, from the ground, anyway) Pep-Zee Vendur, and their run-in with the ever-moving Tra’shcan.
Incidentally, they also met two deranged creatures whose names, they ascertained, were Acissej and Norahs. They didn’t say much, and for seven-eighths of the time just laughed hysterically and mumbled, "The integral from a to b of two pi why times the square root of one plus dee-why over dee-ex, dee-why." It sounded like gibberish to Avogadro, but Gregoria asked their two caretakers what had happened.
"It is a sad case," replied Nestri K, the amiable caretaker. "The horrible, terrible beige-colored (beige was often thought to be the color of the darling little hat of the Father of Ultimate Evil, although one stubborn sect often insisted that it was tan) Ytnuoc Lanif came to Topper and cast an evil spell over them, robbing them of their sanity," she said.
"I thought that the people of Topper never had any sa-" began Gregoria, who was quickly quieted by Avogadro’s elbow in her stomach.
"Go on," said Avogadro, narrowly avoiding the fist that Gregoria was about to place merrily in his eye.
"And now they repeat the Lanif’s sayings for most of the day," continued Anna, the once-jovial caretaker. "It gets progressively worse. Why, when it started three weeks ago, they were themselves for half the time. Now, they just babble..." She trailed off. "You will find Topper a much changed place," was all she would say further.
Finally arriving at Topper with the four additional characters, Avogadro and Gregoria found that this was indeed true. The few people that remained were sitting around, looking glum. Adding to its surreal feeling were the pieces of sheet metal pounded into right angles, presumably by the Lanif.
Avogadro, shocked, announced," What could have caused this terrible change?" Gregoria and the three wanderers looked at him. "Oh. Ah, er. Hmm," he said sheepishly, "the Lanif, right?"
Gregoria rolled her eyes. "What I find strange," she said, "is that Lanifs don’t usually have this kind of power." She waited for Avogadro to make his brilliant deduction; must keep up appearances.
"The Suluclac Koob!" he exclaimed. "There’s its mark," he said, gesturing at a squiggly line on one of the destroyed trees.
Anna squinted at the marking. "It looks disturbingly like the cosecant, squared," she said. There was a collective gasp from the crowd.
"Or perhaps it is the derivative of the negative cotangent," added Gregoria, who had a knack for contributing generally useless information.
"And that one’s the sine, or the integral of cosine!" declared Netsir.
"Well, anyway," said Avogadro, who was getting irritated because this math stuff was beginning to go over his head, "we need to find the Koob and remove it from the hands of the one who has done this evil!"
A cheer went up. The township was with them. They headed for the depths of Chemistravinth, following the sines (and cosecant-squareds) of destruction.
Unfortunately most of the town had a horrible sense of direction and actually went in the direction of the Mountains of the Great Fret’zo, so when the party arrived at the lair at the end of the destruction it was back down to Avogadro, Gregoria, Netsir, Anna, Acissej, and Norahs. "Are we gonna storm the castle?" asked Gregoria, broadsword sparkling merrily in the hazy sunlight.
"No," replied Avogadro, and Gregoria suddenly looked less than merry. Avogadro cowered slightly and added, "You’ll get to use the sword soon enough." He described his plan. "We’ll enter the castle as minstrels and find the location of the Koob. Then and only then will we face down the Villain and return the Koob to its rightful owner."
Everyone thought that this was a great plan, except Gregoria who noted that they had no instruments. "We’ll sing," said Avogadro, and so they did. Badly.
They were halfway through a tortured rendition of Gilbert and Sullivan’s "The Pirates of Penzance" when the gatekeeper let them in. The castle was, as most castles were, damp and rather dreary. Avogadro, who had been anticipating a cliché, was thrilled. "Gregoria, take some candles and search out the Koob. And take those crazy kids with you."
"What are you going to do, Avogadro?" asked Anna.
"Defeat the Villain, just as soon as I find out who and where he, she, or it is."
Anna frowned, as if about to object to this plan, but Gregoria resigned herself to rescuing her hero and shoved Anna down the passage ahead of her. "Men," she remarked.
Several twists and turns later, Norahs (who happened to be in her lucid period) spotted a large sine whose left-hand limit disappeared into a seemingly blank wall. The group approached the stones and, sure enough, the Koob lay inside. Snatching it off its pedestal, Gregoria rushed back down the hallway, and outstrode the four Topperites. "There’s no time to lose!" she shouted, leading them directly into a contingent of brawny castle guards, who managed to grab Gregoria, Anna, and Netsir K and manhandle them roughly to the down the hall. The Koob lay on the ground. Acissej and Norahs looked at each other. "I don’t want to touch it," they remarked simultaneously.
"Fancy meeting you here," commented Avogadro from the cage that his merry sidekick and friends were summarily thrown into. "I do believe I’ve found our Villain," he continued, and gestured to a bejeweled throne at the front of the vaulted and dark (like the night) room.
"You won’t get away with this!" screamed Gregoria, as merrily as one imprisoned in a cage in a Villain’s dark castle could scream. "We know all about your converging series trick, making the Topperites recite formulas for the sum of the series, adding the next term every week. Well, it won’t work on us!"
There was a prolonged silence. Then the villain spoke, booming and echoing in the silent hall. "I am the evil Sever Check," she intoned. "No one stands against me! I shall integrate you into my workforce. There you will learn the true meaning of infinity!"
The little adventurous band looked at one another fearfully. "Sever Check? I thought she was safely confined in the crags of Ay’bee!" gasped Anna.
"With the Koob, anything can happen," replied Avogadro, who didn't know what he was talking about, but it sounded good.
"Where are Acissej and Norahs?"
"Guards!" screamed Sever Check. They did not come right away, as it took four of them to subdue the valiantly fighting pair of Topperites and recover the Koob. When they saw Sever Check, however, their spirits fell. "Well, my Topperites. You are vanquished at last!" The villain repeated her previous statement, and followed with a searing "BWAH-HA-HA-HA" that would have bent a square out of shape. "Take them away."
As they were being led to the great pit, where they could hear screams echo, a though suddenly dawned on Acissej.
"Wait a minute!" shouted Acissej, whirling to face Sever Check. "Integrals involving infinity, or improper integrals, have limits!"
Netsir K caught on. "I define you as the integral of dx over x squared, from one to infinity! Your limit is one!"
Immediately the cage, all of the villainous guards, and the castle disappeared, laving only Avogadro and sidekicks and the Villain. "It’s the power of the Koob!" cried Gregoria. "Quick, someone finish it!"
Sever Check, still disbelieving what had been done, began to redefine her terms.
Norahs stammered, "I define us as the int-integral of the harmonic series, from one to infinity, and th-therefore, we diverge..."
"While you converge at a point!" shrieked Gregoria.
There was a ringing "ping" and Sever Check was transformed into a small harmless dot.
"See, we did study," said Norahs to the dot.
"So there," said Acissej, and, squishing the dot into a circular blob, calculated its slope field. "How do you like our curve?"
"Well now, that wasn’t so hard," said Avogadro.
"Well, now what do we do?" asked Acissej.
"I suppose we could keep it, as long as we use it for good and keep it far away from Chemistravinth," said Gregoria.
"Yes," replied Avogadro, who was again feeling secure about his leadership position. "Or rather, keep people from converging on the Koob."
"Perhaps it belongs in Physicsdelphia?" suggested Norahs.
"We’ll travel there first, then!" declared Avogadro.
Obviously, the Defenders of the Suluclac Koob (as they had dubbed themselves in a little tea ceremony after the fact) had to accompany them. So they said goodbye to fond Topper, and diverged (as Norahs had defined them to) to see more of the world.
Back to Topper
