hadil was so close to fulfilling his lifelong dream: completing his collection o’ rhino roast coffee.

as o’ now there are 120 flavors o’ rhino & thruout the last 3 years hadil had been traveling the world, going store to store, picking up any flavor he hadn’t gotten before, as well as ordering a subscription to rhino magazine & going to official events & not only had he tracked down the rare flavors like melondew & bananabread, but also received the limited-time-offer mystery flavor given ’way only in the october 2022 issue o’ rhino monthly & arrived early to rhino’s special january 2023 event @ fredmart to ensure he was able to get 1 o’ the rare give’way “golden” flavor — which was just their regular dark roast, but in a golden package ’stead o’ their usual wisteria.

the only flavor hadil hadn’t been able to check off was grape. that was till today.

finally, @ a small kiosk store in the airport, while waiting to jump on a flight to argentina to check their stores, he found it — in the last place he expected. he double-took when he saw the words, thinking that his mind was playing tricks on him. but, no, there ’twas: “grape” in large, serif characters. he bought it without hesitation, skipped his flight, & rushed home to have a cup in celebration.

as it turned out, grape flavor was probably the most awful flavor hadil had tasted, — e’en worse than popcorn — but nothing could sour the taste o’ checking off that last box on his list & seeing the whole family all there on that top pantry shelf.

citizens o’ boskeopolis always wonder how things seem to change so suddenly. now you will learn the truth.

deep down in the bowels o’ the earth’s crust dwelled the office o’ turnkey & magic, a company that specializes in magical effects. down there a worker named maria, once she’s had her coffee, turns 1 o’ millions o’ levers to turn a piece o’ boskeopolis like a character in ¿guess who?, whether it be a fire hydrant, a mansion on a grassy hill, or e’en the sun or moon themselves. nothing is free from the gears o’ turnkey.

’course, turnkey is such a professional company that they only turn what their client requests, & would only possibly turn things for ill outcomes — turn firs into zombies, books into bats — if they were, for some reason, refused the compensation promised to them from boskeopolis’s parliament, as part o’ contract. “we ain’t evil” is their slogan, after all. that’s what e’eryone assures.

detective jean bellerose knew what was @ stake as they crept to madame esposito’s manor @ the dead end o’ 11 evening, an evening chilly this late into autumn; & while normally the warm glow o’ the full moon to be the most assuring o’ guiding lights thru the black night, on a night like this bellerose cursed it & the conspiracy it lit to foil them, as they did e’ery creak cried by e’ery ol’ rotting stairstep they ascended & e’ery neglected door they opened on the way to their target.

but here ’twas: they could see by the orange glow — this glow a glow bellerose liked to see — ’hind the stainedglass windows on the door, ’nough that they could faintly see the thin black shadows o’ the long curling bevels gainst the dark, dark brown o’ the door, that this was the last door in their way to victory.

but ’pon opening that door, they saw a sight & heard sounds that made them shudder to their throat & stomach & felt a pneumonialike chill suck the color from their face.

there, standing before madame esposito, in her long, flowing robe & slippers, was detective elke braun, their hated rival, already talking to madame esposito.

they both turned to bellerose, braun with a wicked smile, & madame esposito said, ¡o! ¡madasir bellerose! i am surprised you are up this late, too. madasir braun here was just explaining to me their theory o’ the case o’ the death o’ sir svart.

still smiling @ bellerose, braun said, i could start from the beginning ’gain for your edification, madasir, if madame esposito would not mind the tedium.

o, not @ all, madasir. i find the story thrilling ’nough to hear 5 times before becoming bored.

barely holding back a sour frown, bellerose thanked them but declined, & then turned back into the darkness like a candle blown out, vowing vengeance gainst their killsteal rival.

clean up on aisle 19….

so announced assistant lloyd when he saw an otherwise carefree thursday afternoon o’ updating labels on campbell’s soup cans broken with a crash as a mysterious object rained down into the fredmart like a meteor, shattering glass shards in the shape o’ lightning bolts onto the just-cleaned linoleum.

careful to avoid touching & cutting his fingers on the shrapnel, he pinched out the object in question, what looked like a distorted green ear.

{ probably part o’ a muertoween costume. some dumbass kids probably hit it thru the window with a baseball bat with sick kicks }.

such were the last sane thoughts he had before he heard the ungodly ravings that would sprout from this ear, which would drive assistant lloyd into a mental depravity from which he would ne’er ’scape.

“calorans” are so called by humans ’cause they, having no capabilities o’ sight, hearing, scent, or smell, have such strong senses o’ touch, specially temperature, that they can feel a 16th o’ a celsius degree¹. it is thru this sense o’ temperature that they store & read information: creating what we would call “glyphs” o’ warmth, whose differing temperatures give out information, not unlike that a letter gives.

howe’er, caloran languages tend to be mo’ context sensitive, which sequences o’ glyphs having different meanings in different contexts, including sometimes introducing or switching context states², which, in addition to the much larger # o’ glyphs, — greater than 500, a’least 160 in use by the average adult³ — allows for much mo’ information to be packed in smaller sequences.

also, due to the inherent ordinal nature o’ temperature, there is a relative aspect to glyphs to their established contexts⁴, like changing octaves in music, which would be hard to accurately describe without taking up a whole book on the subject itself.

Resources

1 garthrook, g. & guillame, e. the biology o’ calorans. university o’ boskeopolis press. 2180. p. 28.

2 tabitha, a. k. caloran language. university o’ boskeopolis press. 2155. pp. 72 – 76.

3 ibid. p. 16.

4 ibid. pp. 78 – 92.

ok, next on my list is… ¡kilroy! kilroy, ¿what letter will you pick?.

kilroy, with his arms held up to his sides in the awkward manner o’ a mild-mannered man who was not used to the attention o’ the all-seeing camera eyes said with a nervous titter in the back o’ his throat, jack, i think — i think i’ll buy a vowel.

¿what vowel will that be?.

e.

jack looked down @ his card. there is indeed a few e’s in there.

on the board ’bove some letter flipped, spelling out the word “a __t a_o_e t_e _est”.

all right, ¿who’s next? let’s see… luann….

i’m thinking… ¿m?.

hmm… let’s see… no, sorry: there’s no m.

this foreboding phrase compelled the figure, wrapped up like a mummy, lying on the bed that was the stage centerpiece, to start moaning loudly thru its muffled mask as it tried to pull gainst its locks, to no avail.

as per cue, dr. vox pulled out his surgical saw, walked o’er toward the subject, held 1 o’ its arms, & began scissoring it, while the subject moaned e’en mo’ loudly & tried thrashing ’bout, which accomplished nothing but spreading the blood all o’er the stage.

jack continued, that’s all the time we have today, friends. ¡join us tomorrow for ’nother exciting game o’ “sawman for a million”!.

’twas a vile thing, & they knew they had to get rid o’ it by their typical ritual to cleanse their souls o’ its evil.

¿what was this thing that filled e’ery person o’ the tribe with dread? ’twas an invisible ball o’ energy, — seemingly harmless — but which spewed an endless stream o’ barbarism, which i could not describe without dying myself.

so roger stood with his club held aloft while rodney held this ball o’ energy in his gloved hand. he wound up his arm & then threw it @ roger, & roger, sweating under his helmet, watched this energy, knowing that if it struck him, he would be toast. as he saw it near him, he swung, & up it went flying, & out o’ the hills bordering their village, ’way. then they both raised their arms high & roger ran round the rhombus-shaped stadium.

since professor dawn summers had gone back to freelance work after she retired from university, most o’ the work solicited from her were basic cases solved with household chemistry, which she politely referred to her better former students, which was fine, since she didn’t need the money; but finally, 1 october afternoon, she found the juiciest o’ cases drop into her lap.

this patient was known as a celibria, & appeared to dawn’s admittedly rather weak eyes to be a tiny sun & moon — the size o’ footballs, each — attached to each other by some mysterious green bar. when they floated into her livingroom — & what an beautifully absurd sight ’twas, seeing this alien creature floating ’bove her counselor’s couch — she couldn’t stop herself from holding a hand out toward the sun & feeling the warmth o’ its heat, which was, thankfully, might less than what the real sun gave out, but was ’stead felt like what came out o’ a heater.

e’en mo’ absurd was their problem, a problem they said they’d had their whole life, & were desperate to finally solve: they each wanted to grow mighty as their real counterparts so they could rise into space & join their brethren; but they found that as 1 grew, the other shrunk; & ’cause they loved each other so much, neither had the nerve to try growing so big that the other shrunk into nothing.

dawn, touched by their unique problem, tried her best to study them & find a cure to their affliction, but, alas, e’en after a full decade could find no solution…

the pale phantom sat in the dark room with nothing but a desk just as dark, impossible to see in the abyss, & a paper & pen, both as blaring white as the specter. in its bony fingers rigormortis stiff it held the pen before the paper, but did not move. its black holes for eyes penetrated the rectangular white void that was the paper, but also did not move.

the only movement in this room were the black arms on the only other white face in that room — the face o’ a clock. its li’l arms ratcheted & ratcheted, each accompanied by a mousy tick. & yet with each greeting, the pale phantom responded with nothing but silence, as if ’tweren’t there @ all.

while the pale phantom sat frozen, the clock had o’er years & years slowly but incrementally left it ’hind. like the moon, with each tick it pulled further back into the void, causing it to shrink… till eventually, ’twould shrink to nothing, leaving the pale phantom to be devoured by the darkness.

Here fables the platinum gun o’ Borrowdale, the richest cousin in town. As you can see, their tombstone was baked not o’ the same stone that built so many graves in this necropolis, but o’ a lustrous yellow rock from Phobos, where they led the war to fund a return trip back to earth in parliament, years after the starship which had brought them there had decayed beyond use. ’Pon return they launched a business selling thanthwe lachikaso thru teleport’ario & thru that managed to expand the business into the dominant teleport’ario business for all things. But the origins o’ their business was still remembered ’pon their death, & their heirs commissioned for their grave to be made o’ the stone, e’en tho, thanks to their business, it had become so common as to be valueless & considered passé by all the fashionpassions.

Li’l did anyone realize that in their dying breaths Borrowdale had rued e’er venturing off & to Phobos to collect those stones & has wished that they had used their limited time on this earth dedicating themselves to the 1 true god, Catface.