Unspeakable Horrors
Upon further reflection, it was obvious that a pack of pigeons couldn’t carry a whale through the skies over London. Still, that didn’t stop the viewing party from voicing shocked indignation.
“Lazy birds,” grunted a round man, adjusting his monocle. “Quitters, the lot of them. Oh… present company excepted, of course.”
Archimedes the duck tipped his bowler to the man, and put his opera glasses back to his eyes to get a better angle of the exploding blubber on the horizon. “No, you’re quite right,” he said. “A poor choice indeed. I’m inclined to think this micro-messaging fad will never take off.”
“Hey duck!” said Finley the telekinetic fish, wobbling through the air, the water in his fishbowl a suspicious shade of champagne. “You’ve gotta try the caviar! It’s amazing!”
“Finley!” hissed Archimedes. “You do realize caviar are fish eggs, do you not?”
Finley glanced at the plate of hors d'oeuvres he had in tow.
“Meh, it’s cool. They’re unborn, so it’s not as icky as it could be. Hey! Let’s shoot flaming arrows at the pigeons! Who’s with me?”
During times of great tragedy, a host must always wait at least one hour before serving refreshments, unless the victims were of a lower class.
Things at the after-party took a turn for the worse when Mr Elgar refused to cut short his performance of “Queen Mary’s Song” in favour of Mr Rose’s crowdsourced composition. Once the word “abomination” was cast, it went to pistols at dawn, and neither was heard from again.
Archimedes was being shown the twenty-eighth tablet notepad of the evening (“The way of the future! Convenience be damned!”) when a young lady in an ample dress made her way to his side. With a wave of her hand, the hapless entrepreneur packed up his tablet and hurried off to compare sizes with his competitors.
“Do tablets interest you, sir?” she asked.
“Good heavens, no,” Archimedes laughed. “They lack the mustiness to defeat paper, and the brass to be truly technological. I will never, under any circumstances, buy such a thing. Unless Mr Edison makes one, of course.”
“Naturally,” smiled the woman, and held out her hand. “I am Duchess Pinchenbadam,” she said. “You must be the famed Archimedes, from America.”
“Indeed, madam,” he said smoothly. “I am here to see what great innovations our cousins in Britannia have devised, so I may steal their ideas before they file patents across the Atlantic.”
“So it’s a business trip you’re on, not pleasure?”
“Spin the bottle!” yelled Finley from the back of the room. “Ladies, come spin the bottle! Hey, beat it, buddy! Girls only!”
Archimedes’ left eyelid twitched with repressed rage.
“You could say that,” he grumbled.
“Have any innovations taken your fancy?” asked the Duchess.
“I am testing a service called Gowallering. Do you know it?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said, eyes twinkling.
“Well,” began Archimedes, “put simply, it’s a network of bombastic Irish midgets who shout your every move into the air through megaphones.”
“To what end?”
“That, I cannot tell. I was mortified when Finley found an alley of prostitutes yesterday, let me tell. Those midgets go into quite a lot of detail, most of which is not for the faint of heart.”
“I can imagine!”
“And when we returned to our hotel, our room had been ransacked by thieves! It would appear they heard we were departing. Needless to say, I have suspended the service and filed a bug report with the developers.”
“I should think so. Terrible!”
“And what of you, Duchess?” Archimedes asked smoothly. “Do you know of any great, easily-replicated treasures in London?”
Suddenly, without warning, the Duchess slapped him across the face, and he dropped his sherry with a crash.
“How dare you!” she fumed, and stormed off past Finley, who was racing to see what the action was about, and whether he could parlay it into a game of strip poker.
“Duck!” he gasped. “You’re finally giving sadomasochism a try? Aces! Give me five minutes to get the whip and—”
Before Archimedes could begin scolding, he was pushed to the ground by a large bulbous man with sideburns like a pair of Scottish terriers and a cigar clenched in his scattershot teeth.
“Beast!” boomed the man. “Villain! Philanderer!”
“Hey, I’m over here!” said Finley.
The large man pointed a meaty finger at Archimedes, shook it warningly.
“You took advantage of my niece! You sullied her good name! I’ll have you hanged!”