"You two look quite confrused."
            "Confrusion necessitates clarity, Darlene.  I'm hoping you have a way to invert ours to the latter."
            "I haven't hit my break yet so I haven't gotten a chance to look for anything, given Skip just asked seven minutes ago.  I assume he's bullshitting a second bout of amnesia from the fact that he's back already, because he usually wouldn't be quite that pesty.  On an average day, he'd wait at least another couple sours before--"
            "How does she know that word?  I thought you said I made it up later?"
            "Gossip's a bitch.  In the time it took you to walk here, the shady fellow in Frank's bar in the corner you probably hadn't noticed called me up and relayed the whole incident.  Quite a dramatic scene, I must say, Mr. Nameless Phylor.  For someone who knows how a tiny chip in a glass could unravel the fabric of existence at any self-important event in the history of Okuaka, just plain smashing two of them entirely, then handing over a fictional formula for a copyrighted substance to someone who never remembers to pay his licensing fees, is just plain nuts.  The Council is sure to de-rez you to bits.  I'd ask when your grand temporal tampering trial is but you wouldn't tell me if you knew.  Noninterference directives indeed.  You probably invaded Skip's Adventures In Writing Block just to purchase a couple shares of stock of some idea that will be all the rage by the end of time, if anything becomes of my whole stock market idea.  Would you like to invest in that?  If you don't have any money on you I also have an idea for a digital monetary transfer service.  I could even--"
            "This is serious, Darlene; my tot here dumped me completely off target, and now Skip--"
            "Dumped?  Ha, got off at the wrong tot is more like it.  Your sense of physical direction is as miserable as Skip's sense of plot direction.  Probably gawking at some short-skirted unified phylo theory and got off two tots too late."
            "Darlene, that's it!"
            "Pervert.  See, Skip?  I'll bet you twenty it was underdeveloped, too."
            "No, the tot had some sort of temporal surge as it had some brilliant idea, and ran away with itself for a moment.  When it caught itself, it assured us it had slowed down enough to compensate.  It must have been wrong, and got exactly two chapters ahead of itself!  Or maybe just crossed over and just skipped two pages, frangle-depending...  That's right, it was a cyclic tot. It must have gone straight through page frot 343 and I got off at page frot 9 instead of frot 338 where I was going, and then--"
            "Bases!"
            "Oh, sorry, Skip."
            "Accepted, for I have no idea why I should be bothered anyway, as I stopped paying attention to all this undefined terminology quite awhile ago.  Maybe I'm supposed to define it later... or earlier, or something."
            "I'm sure the confusion will help inspire you to fictionalize an idea for a Base-7 / Base-10 Harmonization Unification Template Theory totally useless to practical mathematics--but that by my time will eventually result in my studying of the infinitely developed field inspired by your work--later in the day."
            "What in Okuaka makes you say that?"
            "Too much!  I'm saying too much.  But frack it.  At least we're a step closer to figuring out this crisis, given our confusion is finally back on track!"
            " 'Darlene thwacked a red button to her side, as Skip uselessly narrated the event as it was the only one in the scene with any kind of narration.  It must have meant it was an important one.  Or maybe someone involved had just been incompetent.' "
            "Come on, Skip, let's find Dr. Vifps.  The first thing you're going to need to buy more time is a note of your condition for the DAC Temporal Mental Instability Form.  Darlene, I don't suppose you could just forge a--"
            "Out!"

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