The Hunting of the Snar

(with apologies to Charles Lutwidge Dodgeson)

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Everyone's over 18.

Reading the Lewis Carroll poem won't help you understand the story any better, but everyone ought read it at least once in their lives.

Theakston's Old Peculier (yes, that's the correct spelling) is a classic porter; it's every bit as good as Alice describes it.

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I was sitting in a little tavern near my hotel that I'd wandered into. Business trips get so monotonous and boring, so I try to find good local watering holes in whatever city I'm in. I was surprised that this neighbourhood joint had Theakston's Old Peculier on the list, so I ordered one. Black as sin, strong as a bull and tasty as your first girlfriend's pussy.

I was on my second when this guy walked up, and without even a by-your-leave, plopped down on the other side of the table.

I raised an eyebrow in his direction, but I wasn't worried; I had my pepper spray in my purse and (metaphorically speaking) a third-dan black belt around my waist.

Besides - he wasn't hard on the eyes at all, and it looked as if this evening wouldn't be just more boring waiting. I wondered what he was like in bed.

Without introducing himself, he started talking.

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Hi.

Are you real?

Don't know, huh? That means you're real, but you don't know it yet, or that you're one of the NPCs, which is really a lot more likely, in which case you're gonna act like you think I'm crazy and walk off shaking your head. Maybe you'll listen for a while, but then...

Huh? NPC? Means "Non Player Character". I picked it up playing D&D and other RPGs (oh - sorry - "Role Playing Games") back before I Found Out. You asking makes it more likely that you're gonna turn out to be real. NPCs are extra characters that the Game Master controls to give the characters the players are playing someone to interact with.

"'Before I found out,' ... what?" Good question. I think I'm almost ready to decide you're real already. But I gotta run a couple tests. The Boojums are always looking out for people who've figured out what the whole world is really about.

"What's a Boojum?" Look - let me tell this my way so we have a chance to get out of here and go our merry ways and never see each other again before They get here. Okay.

See that guy sitting over at the bar? Describe him.

"Six foot, muscles, home-made tats all over both arms, head shaved."

Not bad. What's it look like his attitude on the world is?

No, no - play along. If this works out like I think it will, you're gonna be real happy about it. If not, you'll never remember this conversation; you'll think we talked football or the Market or something.

Uh, no - can't let ya leave just now. Sorry.

Yeah - you can't get up off the stool, and you can't do anything that would attract attention. Have another sip of your drink and listen. Nobody's gonna hurt you. Well, the Boojums might take you out, but i don't think it hurts. 'Course, there's no way to ask anyone they've taken out about i, so I'm mostly just guessing.

Calm down.

Uh huh - you're calm now, aren't you - no matter how much you ought to be panicking.

Okay - Mr Muscles over there. General bad attitude, right? Barmaid won't get within arm's length of him unless she's serving a drink, and she gets away fast after. Couple of people brushed up against him and he snarled at them, even though he's sitting halfway out into the passage that leads to the restrooms.

Did'ja notice he called one guy "Faggot", said the guy was trying to feel him up, and threatened to bust his face if he came within arm's length again?

(Not that he was WRONG, understand - Joey is a little light in the loafers, and he likes to grope guys to see what they do.)

And were you here early enough to hear what he said to the barmaid? No? Well, what he said - and the way he said it - is why she's spending most of her time at the other end of the stick, talking to those two plainclothes Vice cops.

Well, anyway, he's an NPC. In fact, everyone here right now except me and (likely) you is an NPC. NPCs are programmed to look exactly like Real People. But they're not. You know that old joke about there's only about a hundred thousand real people in the world - the rest are just mediocre special effects?

It's true. Well, there's more like a few million real people, but otherwise? Yeah. NPCs.

Okay. What'a'ya think this is?

"An iPad."

No. And, sorta, yeah. It's an iPad case and some of the same guts, but it's been repurposed. Now it's a remote control. It looks like an iPad so that Boojums and other Snarks who don't know they are yet won't notice and ... Yeah. "Snarks". Let me talk, okay?

Watch Muscles. I got this one pre-programmed, because it's gotta affect everyone in the bar but us and I want all of it to kick in at once.

Watch.

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He set the iPad-that-he-said-wasn't on the tble, glanced over toward the bar, tapped it a couple times to load a program, said "Watch this, now," and hit one more key.

"Pow," he said.

"Pow," indeed. I don't think I blinked, but all of a sudden, where there'd been a big ugly bruiser with a bad attitude, there was now a sexy, naturally red-haired woman. I could tell she was a natural redhead because she wan't wearing anything but platform-soled, red, six inch fuck-me stiletto heels, sheer white thigh-highs and a very lacy black garter belt that was obviously designed as much as a frame for her flaming-red pussy as it was to hold up the stockings. She was also enough over six feet tall that the heels put her right at seven.

Without a word, she rose from her stool, swivel-hipped the length of the bar, grabbed the barmaid and kissed her very thoroughly, hipchecked the male Vice cop (dressed as a pimp) off his stool, grabbed his female partner's short skirt (she was, inevitably, dressed as one of the "pimp"'s girls), flipped it up, pulled her thong out of the way, and began energetically slurping her cunt.

Now, while I was a tad shaken by this, I would have expected Pimp Boy to protest, or Fake Hooker to scream (in shock, if nothing else) and/or shove her away and the barmaid to sa=tart yelling and maybe call the cops ... but none of it happened.

The guy stood there and didn't do anything.

The "hooker" simply grabbed the red head in her crotch and pulled it in tighter; she raised her legs, hooking one over her partner's empty stool and the other on the bar.

And the barmaid reached inside her jeans and began fingering herself.

The six other people within ten feet? None of them seemed to notice. At all.

In fact, one guy walked up to the bar, stood right next to the action and ordered two Bud Lites, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on at all. And the barmaid served them, took his money, and made change, all with her left hand, without pulling her right hand out of the front of her jeans.

Then she stepped around the bar, behind the female cop, grabbed her arms, and eased her backward till her shoulders were on another stool ... and stripped off her jeans and panties and straddled her fact, shoving her pussy in the girl's face. Then she reached forward, popped the "hooker"'s tits out of the skimpy top she wore and began playing with them ... as the blonde began licking her cunt as energetically as the redhead was licking hers.

It was at this point that the male cop dropped his pants, revealing no underwear at all and a fairly impressive-looking cock ... which he promptly shoved all the way into the redhead's snatch with a single thrust and began enthusiastically fucking her doggie-style.

And nobody but us was even noticing, much less watching.

"Okay - time to go," he said, grabbing my arm. "I just let loose enough klatha that every Boojum in the Tri-State area is going to be here in ten minutes. They'll put everything in there back the way it's s'posed to be, and then come looking for me. Well, 'For us.' You saw all that, which means you're a snark, all right. And Boojums have a nasty way of taking people out and then interrogating the nothing-at-all that's left."

He started walking rapidly away toward the nearest subway station, pulling me along.

And, just as I couldn't move earlier, I was powerless to resist that hand on my arm.

"...and, incidentally, just in case you're wondering what happened back there? Snarks have the ability to use a rather mysterious computer program called 'Magic Wand' to manipulate I call "Klatha Energy" - some call it "The Force" - to ... well, the best anyone's ever described it yet is that we can 'Hack God.'"