An alternate introduction for the Ferret of Inconvenience

Every time Julie drove in Boston, it reminded her of why so many people took public transportation instead. With nice symmetry, every time she took public transportation, it reminded her of why she owned a car. Today was a public transportation day.

[inconvenience filler]

Two plausibly studentlike figures were sitting on the steps, chatting – a lanky, skanky young man with a fedora and unwashed hair who looked generally pleased with himself, and a somewhat cleaner and more demure girl with thick-rimmed but stylish glasses. At least, her posture was more demure – as Julie trudged up the stairs through a haze of cigarette smoke, she noticed that the girl's eyes were very bright and alert, and that even though she was doing most of the listening, she seemed in fact to have the upper hand in the conversation. The man was scrambling through a waterfall of clearly unconvincing explanations as if his listener would vanish if he ever stopped to breathe – something about how he had to finish his doctoral program before something something. The girl just watched him with a small, calm smile.

Julie grinned to herself as she swung the library door open, musing on how it was that it could be possible to tell that an argument was entirely unconvincing without even knowing what was being said. The last thing she heard before it swung shut was the girl's voice, saying amiably but firmly, "Rasputin is not your archnemesis." Fortunately, the door slid back into place before they could hear her laugh.

The library was dark after the sunlight, and seemed to be cordoned off past the entranceway. Blinking, Julie reached for her consortium library card and held it out to the girl at the desk. The girl blinked back at her. All of a sudden, the awful obvious dawned on her: the reason Harvard hadn't been on her initial list of libraries was that Harvard was not part of the consortium, and didn't care what sort of external authority she could command. (Not that she commanded much in the way of authority anywhere, but at least she had a library card.)

She explained, as calmly as she could manage, why she was there, how she had been all over Boston already, and why she really, really needed a copy of this article. Finally, the girl – who was several years younger than her, clearly bored, and wearing flip-flops – gave her a series of paperwork to fill out and a sticker that said "Escorted Access", and informed her that the first-floor copy machine only operated with Harvard IDs, so she would have to go downstairs to Xerox her journal once she found it.

After some typical blundering, she found the journal and went to copy it downstairs, which was even darker than upstairs and full of tightly spaced shelves packed with books. After three tries, she figured out how to position the journal so that the photocopier captured all the text. Painstakingly, she separated out the good copies, compiled them in order, and turned to head back upstairs. Promptly, someone barreled into her and she dropped the whole thing.

The other person had evidently been carrying a heavy stack of books, which kept moving when he stopped, and slammed into her before ricocheting onto the floor. After an initial valiant attempt to keep her balance, Julie decided it was easiest just to fall over.

In a positively anomalous stroke of luck, she didn't actually fall on any books, rendering the experience far less uncomfortable than it could have been. For a minute she sat where she'd fallen, trying to regroup her thoughts and catch her breath. Eventually, she became aware that she was being apologized to profusely by the fedora-wearing student who had been sitting out front making excuses.

In addition to the fedora, he was dressed in rumpled clothes, calf-high boots, and wire-rimmed glasses, with dark hair and eyes that were a somehow incongruous shade of green. Fortunately, he seemed not to smell the way she might have imagined he would have. In fact, he seemed altogether cleaner than he had looked from a distance, making her wonder how much energy he put into seeming as unwashed as he did. She'd thought most grad students were over that sort of thing.

"It's all right," she said, picking herself slowly up off the floor. "You might want to be more careful next time, though."

"It wouldn't help," he said matter-of-factly. "But if it would make you feel better, I suppose I could try."

"Why don't you do that," she suggested. "Maybe circumstances will surprise you."

"Circumstances always surprise me," he said, collecting her papers and handing them to her. "But it still wouldn't help."

He set about picking up his own books, as she leafed through her papers to make sure they were all still there. Astonishingly, not only were they all there, but they were all in the original order – even the ones that had she had organized according to her own weird logic.

"How did you do that?" she asked.

"Do what?" he replied, retrieving the last of the books.

"Put my papers back in the order I had them in."

"Oh, that," he said, holding the door to the staircase for her. "I saw how they fell. This sort of thing happens a lot."

"How hard is it not to bump into people?" she asked.

"Easier for some than for others," he replied.

He thunked his books onto the counter to be dealt with by the girl at the desk, and Julie continued out into the sunshine, deciding against waiting around to see if the girl would be more polite to a fellow Harvard student. (She didn't look like the sort to be impressed by skanky grad students no matter where they were from, anyway.)

The sun was shining brightly now, and she was feeling considerably better about her day now that she'd at least accomplished something. Still, being talked down to by an undergraduate desk clerk was fundamentally irking in a way that the other frustrations of her day hadn't been, and part of her was in the mood to go in search of someone to complain to. (All of her was pretty sure this would be pointless.) And there was something nagging her about the grad student.

"Do you have everything?" a voice asked behind her. She realized that she was standing staring at her sheaf of photocopies. She looked up at the aforementioned grad student, who stepped up next to her, blinking hard and shielding his eyes from the sunlight.

"I think so," she said.

"Good to hear," he said, continuing to squint. "You were looking a little bit intense there. I really am sorry about before. I hope I didn't make it sound like I wasn't trying not to cause trouble, or anything."

"No worries," she replied. "I was just plotting cosmic revenge against Harvard for their library policies."

He laughed. "Those are definitely not my fault! For one thing, they do serve a good purpose."

"How often do they have problems with books being stolen by students of other area universities?" she demanded.

"I don't know about that," he said, setting his books down on the sidewalk and rummaging around in his pocket for something. "But they do get a lot of books stolen generally."

She frowned, distracted from the matter of book theft statistics by trying to think of some non-blunt way to phrase the other question on her mind. There really wasn't one. "Are you the Ferret of Inconvenience?" she asked.

He stared at her, obviously a bit taken aback. She was about to apologize and flee when he grinned. For a split second his pupils flattened to horizontal slits, then back to normal. He pulled a pair of detachable shaded lenses out of his pocket and clipped them onto his glasses. "I might be. How on earth did you figure that out?"

She hadn't quite thought through how she was going to explain that part. "I teach second grade," she said. "A friend of yours was my class hamster for a few months, I think. He mentioned that there was a Ferret of Inconvenience once, when I asked him why there wasn't a Flying Hamster of Doom. And you seemed like you might be an elemental."

"I did?"

"Yeah, you – well, you just did," she said. "And my entire day has been ridiculously inconvenient."

"Actually, that's probably just coincidence," he said. "I'm not the cause of inconvenience in the world; I just incarnate it. More of it happens when I'm around – a lot more of it, actually – but only in close proximity to me."

"So it was just the stuff in this library that was your fault?"

"Not anything that has to do with Harvard University policy," he said. "But maybe other things. Certainly my knocking you over."

"Well, yeah," she said, unreasonably annoyed at not being able to blame the rest of her day on interference by a force of nature. The day certainly deserved it. "I don't think I ever expected that the Ferret of Inconvenience would be a Harvard grad student."

"I'm more of a universal grad student," he replied. "I'm a member of every program, and I never quite graduate from any of them."

"Some of my friends tell me they have nightmares like that," she said. She realized immediately after saying it that this wasn't particularly polite, but he didn't seem offended.

"Are your friends ferrets of inconvenience?" he asked.

"Not that I know of," she said. "Are there many of them out there?"

"No," he said. "I'm the only one."

"Then of course they aren't," she said.

"So then they don't have anything to worry about," he replied. "If I'd realized you knew the hamster, I would have introduced myself," he continued. "But most people don't believe me when I tell them that I'm the Ferret of Inconvenience."

"I can't imagine why," she said. "So, what do they call you?"

"Some unprintable things," he said with a grin. "But mostly Greg."

"So that's who you – " she exclaimed before she managed to cut herself off. "That explains everything."

"It does?" he asked, puzzled.

"I – Wait!" she said, suddenly distracted away from a question she knew the answer to by a question she didn't. "Why did you actually produce smoke, when you were smoking? Eveline said she didn't."

"So you met Eveline," he said with an expression halfway between a grin and a snort. "She's a character and five eighths. What did she tell you about me?"

"She didn't," Julie replied.

"Really?" he asked. He sounded very disappointed.

"Is that a problem? She was mostly preoccupied with making sure the hamster realized he owed her lunch."

The ferret grinned. "She does that. I suppose it’s acceptable that she didn't insult me, if she was legitimately busy. But it's a bit of a shame – she's so good at it."

"Are you two friends?" Julie asked, frowning. From his description it was hard to be sure. "Or – "

His grin broadened, and he shook his head. "She thinks, I suspect, that I'm a classless interloper with lousy French. But she says it so well!"

"Is she wrong?" Julie asked with amusement.

"Of course not," he responded, sounding extremely pleased with himself. "Well…" His expression sobered. "Actually, my French is more authentic than hers," he said quietly. "But it's way more important to her than to me, so if she wants the distinction, I'm happy to let her have it." He glanced around. "I trust we can keep this between us."

"Of course," she replied, trying to process this. "How on earth did you end up with better French than Eveline?!"

"By being European," he replied, grinning again. "She speaks in a much more refined manner than I do, and is undoubtedly much more pleasant to listen to. But like a true snob she considers Parisian French definitive, and I spend entirely more time there than she does!" He tossed his hat in the air and caught it. "And I know all the slang, which she probably persists in considering beneath her, no matter how many tangents I inspired Victor Hugo to write about it."

"You provide literary inspiration?" she asked.

"Not that I know of. I suggested it over [think of appropriate food, beverage or situation to insert here]."

"You – "

"I didn't think he would take me seriously!" he protested.

"Not that!" She shook her head. First things first – "You still haven't explained about the smoking."

"What sort of self-respecting inconvenient being would smoke cigarettes without generating any cigarette smoke?" he asked reasonably. "I mean, what would be the point?"

"I suppose," she said.

"And I – " He frowned. "I don't think Laurie smokes. I don’t see her very often, though, so it's hard to say."

"Laurie?" Julie asked. "Is that the girl you were talking with before?" He nodded. "You could ask her next time you do see her," she suggested.

"Nah." He shrugged. "By then I'll have forgotten."

"Long time?" Julie asked curiously. She wouldn't normally have inquired, but given that he was the Ferret of Inconvenience, it seemed just as likely that the problem was his memory.

"Eh," he said. "Who knows? She wandered off somewhere. She'll be back eventually. Beyond that, I can't really say. Could be a decade or two. She's like that."

Julie decided to drop the subject, since it seemed to be bothering him, and seemed, on the evidence, to be the only topic on earth capable of bothering him. (At least, if he had been an actual person she could have said for sure that he was bothered, but she didn't expect that she was a particularly good judge of anthropomorphic conceptual ferrets.)

"What the heck is a ferret of inconvenience, anyway?" she asked instead

"Me," he replied in tones of the obvious.

"Yes, but... what does that mean?"

"Does it have to mean anything?" he asked.

"Well...I suppose not," she replied dubiously. "But don't most elementals have a point? Like, Tim – "

"Who?"

"Oh," she said. "It's just what I call the hamster. It's easier for me to talk with someone if they have a name." He nodded, with only about a quarter of a smirk (evidently at the choice of name, but hey, it hadn't been her choice). "So," she continued, "he exists to be the elemental hamster…"

"And I exist to be the Ferret of Inconvenience," he said.

"Yes," she said, struggling to either make sense, be patient or both. "But he exists, as I understand it, because there are other hamsters. And you just told me that there are no other ferrets of inconvenience."

"Yes."

"But yet you exist."
"Yes."

"So how does that work?"

"Well," he said, "it's not quite the same thing. He's the Platonic synthesis of all the hamsters in the world. Ditto for Eveline and all the whatever-it-ises she is – Middle Eastern taxonomy is not my strong suit. I'm not the synthesis of anything; I'm just an idea."

"An idea of what?"

"Of a Ferret of Inconvenience, of course."

She blinked hard. "Since when is that an idea?"

"Well, what else is it?"

"Nonsense?"

He shrugged. "Don't ask me. Someone mentioned it in a conversation once, and it worked its way into the fabric of the universe. Therefore, I exist."

"Then why isn't there a Flying Hamster of Doom?" she demanded.

"Some ideas are more persuasive than others."

"But he has his own line of T-shirts, and I've never heard of you."

"I'm a subtle idea," he said. "Full of nuance!"

"That makes no sense."

"Possibly not," he agreed. "Did I say it did? I didn't create the situation. All I can say is that I do exist, and that I am the Ferret of Inconvenience. I have no idea why the world needs a ferret of inconvenience. Having no reason to exist has never been a problem to date, though." He frowned. "Though occasionally a problem with dating."

"Are there more normal ideas out there, then?" she asked (ignoring the dating part, since it seemed likely to at worst upset him, and at best get the conversation totally off track, to the extent that it could be said to have a track in the first place). "Like...I don't know, Perseverance, and Justice, and all?"

"Not that I've ever met. I mean, what would they look like? It's hard to incarnate something that abstract."

"Whereas 'Ferret of Inconvenience' is definite and specific?"

"Isn't it?" he asked. "So much moreso than plain Inconvenience. Pure inconvenience may be out there somewhere, but I'm not sure if I'd recognize it if I met it."

"Is there a normal elemental ferret, though, besides you?"

"There is," he said, making a face. "He doesn't entirely approve of me. Thinks I give ferretness a bad name."

"Aren't all ferrets inconvenient?" she asked. "At least from what I've been told," she amended – she'd never actually met a ferret herself. Or at least, she hadn't met one before.

"Well, yes. But try telling him that!"

"Odd that he'd disagree," she said.

"Not at all," he replied. "If he agreed with me, that would be convenient, and thus counter to his nature."

"You're making my head hurt," Julie said.

"Another victory for inconvenience!" he proclaimed. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he added a bit more seriously. "I can be convenient if I try, but it might be hard if you keep asking philosophical questions."

"Can you make other things be convenient?" she asked. "Can you help me catch the bus?"

"I can try," he said. "Convenience and inconvenience are inextricably reciprocal powers."

"Are you sure those are the longest possible words you could have used in that sentence?" Julie asked as they set off toward the bus stop.

"I probably could have worked 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis' in if I'd really tried," he reflected. "Or at least 'antidisestablishmentarianism'. But yeah. What I was basically just saying is that anything that’s convenient for one person probably contributes to someone else's inconvenience, and vice versa. For example, if the bus is already running late, then if it runs faster to get to your stop on time, it's probably inconveniencing somebody in the process. Like good and evil, or the common-law police power and habeas corpus or – "

"Habeas corpus is a metaphor for inconvenience?" she asked, summoning the skeptical expression she usually saved for student excuses.

"Depends whose side you're on," he said. "See?"

"Since when is habeas corpus a metaphor for anything?" she asked. "I mean, besides other legal stuff."

"Everything is a metaphor for something else," he replied. "Or an analogy, or an allegory, or at least a segue. Even if it doesn't know it." He frowned thoughtfully. "So, does Harvard still have an established church, or did they get rid of that?"

"I have no idea," she said. "So what am I a metaphor, analogy, allegory or segue for?"

"I have no idea. It probable wouldn't make any difference to you one way or another. What matters to you is what you see in the world, not what the world sees in you. Just ask Beatrice Portinari."

"Did she ever have trouble getting a job?" Julie asked. "Or a date? It does so matter what the world sees in me."

"Okay, not in you – through you."

"Through me? So now I'm transparent?"

He sighed, slowing to a standstill as they entered Harvard Square. "You ask me that here?" he said. "Do people go here because it's a good university, or because everyone thinks it's a good university?"

"Isn't it a good university?" she asked.

"That's not the point," he said. "Or maybe it's exactly the point. It is, for the most part – but people would go here anyway, because it's Harvard. I mean, it wouldn't be Harvard if it weren't Harvard, but you know what I mean. People stand here and look around, and they don't see red bricks, they see history, and they see prestige – or they see Puritanical depravity, or libertarian depravity, or Brahmin exclusiveness, or Reese Witherspoon as a lawyer, or John Adams studying astronomy. But no one looks at Harvard and just sees Harvard. And that doesn't mean that Harvard isn't also a real place and a good university, named after a real guy named Harvard who had no idea about any of this and is immortalized in a famous statue that's modeled after someone else."

"Oh, good," she said. "Maybe I can become unduly significant after I'm dead."

"You have no way of knowing that you're not unduly significant now," he pointed out. "You could be somebody's personification of the Church Triumphant."

"Eek!" she said. "That's a bit terrifying. Though honestly the idea of being unduly insignificant is pretty terrifying, too."

He nodded. "You see my point, though. Massachusetts has unusually good examples. They don't even make up their own place names! Or even attach 'new' to them and admit they borrowed them. Does the original Cambridge care, or Boston or Brighton or Plymouth or Dorchester? I have no idea. Does Brighton or Dorchester even know? And then there's the Charles River, which Charles I named after himself, before he was beheaded – on account of conceptual differences – and now they have a race called 'The Head of the Charles,' and it isn't supposed to be a reference to anything!"

"Ugh!" she said, trying hard not to think about that. "You know," she reflected, "some elemental should build something that enables you to find out all the metaphorical and allegorical functions that are attached to something. Sort of like how you can see everyone who links to your web page."

"Except that, as you pointed out, you wouldn't want to know," he said. "No one wants to know about anyone else's allegories and metaphors, unless they produce political threats or art. Besides, elementals don't build anything, except their own identities."

"Arg," she said, pinching her sinuses. "The hamster's world seems so much simpler."

"Of course it does," he replied. "He's not a product of the human imagination. Most things are simpler that way. Do you mind if I run in and get a newspaper?" he asked. "Most places don't sell them in Czech."

"Sure," she agreed. She could certainly use a minute to attempt to process everything he'd just said.

"If normal elementals aren't products of human imagination, how do you explain Eveline?" she asked when he emerged from the newsstand. "Are all the snakes in Syria really ironically francophilic?" Her head would probably feel better if she stopped thinking about all of this, but it was more interesting than the rest of her day, and she was curious.

"I think she's more a product of her imagination," he said, punching the button for the crosswalk. "She does make reference to a lot of human ideas, but only because it amuses her." He shook his head. "She has an odd sense of humor."

Julie decided to let that last remark pass. "But isn't she supposed to be a synthesis?"

"Yeah. She – I can't really explain how it works. I think that's more of a side hobby – I mean, she's ironically serpentine, too."

"But how – "

"I don't really know," he said. "Maybe they all have her sense of humor. And I can't imagine spending all of one's time just being an obscure local snake. But it's not something I personally have to worry about – 'Ferret of Inconvenience,' while quite specific in its way, is a pretty broad job description. I have a lot of latitude."

"What else have you done, besides infest academia?" 'Infest' wasn't, she reflected, a particularly positive-sounding word, but given his ferretness (though could a ferret really be said to infest?) and her friends' experiences, it seemed like the most accurate.

He shrugged. "Odds and ends. Wandering around exploring the world. Beating the hamster at chess. I worked at the White House for a bit under Millard Fillmore, but things were tending towards worse than inconvenient, and I decided politics didn't really need me anyway. So I went back to Europe and mostly hung out there until the PhD thing really caught on."

"How did you end up in so many programs?" she asked. "And why?"

"I…umm. It's a long story," he said. "But basically, I thought it would be a good source of free food. And by the time I realized how insidious it was, it was too late to escape." She laughed. "I mean, really," he said a bit defensively. "I love chaos and nonsense, but my intentions are good!"

"I just wouldn't recommend you say that too loudly around here," she said.

Amazingly, the traffic lights were all in their favor, and they managed to get to the bus stop with no problem. Julie was suitably impressed; trying to cross Harvard Square on foot was usually pretty inconvenient in the best of circumstances. There was no suitable bus in sight, but then, according to the schedule none was due for a few minutes, anyway. Assuming that even unusually convenient buses followed the schedule.

Greg studied the row of golden horseshoes embedded in the pavement with interest. "'William Dawes to Lexington, April 18, 1775,'" he read. "I always wonder where he got a one-legged horse** from."

"I think it's one of those symbolic things you were talking about," she said.

"Kind of, maybe. I was talking about projected symbolism, though, not intentional symbolism that invents one-legged horses for no reason. Actually," he observed, "maybe this one was two-legged. A bicyhorse! You have to be really careful to keep your balance when riding one of those."

"You're very strange," she said.

"Hey, I'm not the one who put up a monument to a non-existent two-legged horse!"

"It's a real horse, it just didn't have two legs! And it's not a monument to the horse, it's a monument to William Dawes!"

"Then – " he paused, and she could have sworn she saw his ears twitch. In the sudden local silence she could hear a man talking on a cell phone, in the precise tone and volume guaranteed to grate on anyone's ears.

"You see," he was saying, "in my experience, ferrets are basically invincible weasels. You pick them up and they just curl into a ball, and when you throw them at furniture, they either bounce right off or stick to it like Velcro." A brief pause. "Oh, yes. I’ve thrown ferrets at people." A pause. "Well – "

The narrative dissolved in an anguished squawk, and Julie turned just in time to see the man duck out of the way of a low-flying pigeon and trip on the historic pavement. His Starbucks coffee fell out of his hand and spilled over his clothes, briefcase, and phone, which sparked and died. He cursed louder and louder as commuters and passersby stared in shock and awe; one older woman looked as if she was about ready to give him a public dressing-down for his language.

"Would that you could learn to use your powers only for good," a voice behind them observed. Greg glared at the hamster, who had appeared out of somewhere and was wearing a Harvard sweatshirt and drinking something obscure-looking. He shook his head in the general direction of the man with the ex-cell phone. "He needs to work on his language. Dreadfully uninspired." He raised his drink and shouted something incomprehensible in the man's general direction, then suddenly seemed to notice Julie. "Hey, it's you!"

"Yes," she agreed. "Are hamsters generally oblivious?"

"I wasn't expecting to see you here," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Being inconvenienced," she replied. "What are you doing here?"

"Being a hamster. Do I ever do anything else?"

"Oh, so you don't have any inextricable reciprocal powers?" she asked.

He blinked. "What?!"

She shrugged. He looked suspiciously at the ferret, who was busy displaying an innocent and even slightly disapproving poker face that he managed to implicitly direct towards the hubbub taking place outside of his line of vision. "This is your fault, isn't it?"

"I'm going to exercise my right against self-incrimination," the ferret replied, not taking his eyes off the extremely serious distance.

"You don't have a right against self-incrimination. You're not human and I'm not a government."

"True. But you can't make me tell you what you want to know, so it adds up to the same thing, doesn't it?"

"No."

"Ah, well." The man with the cell phone finally stormed off in search of paper towels and respite from unsympathetic bystanders telling him he was out of order, and Greg's posture relaxed. Still only allowing himself to crack the slightest smile, (though in Julie's mind, a happy-go-lucky student type in sunglasses and a fedora bearing a professionally serious expression was more conspicuous and more amusing than anything else), he turned and offered his hand to Tim, who shook it. "How're you doing?"

"Pretty well. You?"

"Same. They scheduled all of my qualifying exams for the same hour-long timeslot again. But on the other hand, it's constitutionally impossible for me to either pass or flunk."

"It's a hard life," Tim said. "Where's Laurie?"

The ferret scowled and gestured expressively. "Gone. Where else?"

"Who – ?" Julie began.

"Laurie," the hamster said. "She's – "

"The Raccoon of Furtiveness," Greg finished. He sighed. "It's not a good combination."

Julie tried to suppress a giggle. "The what?"

"Oh, you heard me," he said. "I think I'm going to put 'Invincible Weasel' on my license plate."

"That has way too many letters," she pointed out. "And nothing to do with anything."

"And you don't have a car," Tim added. "And you'd drive on the wrong side of the street if you did."

"I think that's unfair," Greg protested.

"But is it untrue?"

"Are you looking to pick a fight with the Invincible Weasel?"

"Hey, watch what ideas you throw out there!" Tim said. "This world does not need an invincible weasel."

"But I'm already the invincible weasel!" Greg said. "The guy with the cell phone said so!"

Tim looked at Julie. "Is there any chance you could explain this to me?" he asked. "He's never going to."

"Hey!"

"Particularly if it's going to prove him wrong." Greg glared at him. Julie laughed and tried as best she could to describe the cell phone transaction without the ferret interrupting. Tim looked slightly smug by the time she had finished. "See?" he said to Greg. "That wouldn't make you the invincible weasel; it would make Frank the invincible weasel. Do you really want Frank to be the invincible weasel?"

Greg shuddered. "But it would make me an invisible weasel, too!"

"You mean invincible," Julie said. "I hope."
"Right. I'm a ferret, too!"
"Sort of," Tim said.

"I am so a ferret!"

"And not just any ferret, either," Julie agreed. "You have inextricably reciprocal powers of inconvenience. And they're really kind of scary."

This seemed to make him feel somewhat better. "You never explained, by the way."

"Explained what?" she asked, blinking.

"How people calling me Greg explained everything."

"Oh, that," she said. "Well, were you not the grad student named Greg who was meditating in my friend's laundry room in New Haven when the washing machines exploded?"

"I don't meditate!" he said. "I was studying the topography of the linoleum."

"The…" She couldn't really think of a good response to that. "But you were there."

"Maybe."

"Maybe? How can you study the topography of linoleum that's not there?"

"Of course the linoleum was there. Hardwood floors warp when plumbing explodes."

She took a deep breath. "How can you study the topography of linoleum that's not in the same place you are?"

"I have powers!" he replied airly, unclipping the shaded lenses from his glasses as a cloud passed over the sun, and placing them neatly in his shirt pocket.

"No you don't!" Tim retorted. "Well, I mean, you do. But not like that."

Something emitted two unnecessarily loud double beeps, making all three of them jump. Greg pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, looked at the screen, and started to curse in a language Julie couldn't identify.

"Who was it?" Tim asked.

"Laurie. Of course." He glared at the phone. "It didn't even ring."

Tim shook his head, as the ferret stepped off some distance away, punching at his phone's keypad. "Of course it didn't ring," he said to Julie. "When the Raccoon of Furtiveness calls you, your phone never rings." He looked suddenly thoughtful. "I think I saw a fortune cookie that said that, once. I wonder how they knew."

"Words to live by," she said. "What do you do if you actually want to talk with her, then?"

"Be very, very patient." He glanced over at Greg, who seemed to be listening to his voice mailbox. "Which he is, in addition to being Inconvenient."

"I guess the two might have to go together," Julie said. "I mean, unless he has inconvenience immunity, and he doesn't seem to."

Tim chuckled. "He certainly doesn't. He likes inconvenience, though, even if it happens to him. I mean, he sympathizes and agrees that it's unfortunate and all; he just inwardly rejoices in the chaos. It's his nature."

Sunlight flooded the bus stop as the wind propelled the clouds forwards. Greg squinted sharply, fumbling in his pocket for his removable sunglass lenses, and trying to clip them onto his glasses single-handedly without knocking the glasses off his face. In the process, his phone flew out of his hand and onto the pavement, shattering into multiple pieces.

"Sic incommode istae procyoni furtivae evenat!" he shouted, drawing a stare of shock and awe from an elderly professor and making no impact on anybody else whatsoever. He bent down and picked up the pieces, shoving them back into place while continuing to mutter under his breath. Having finished that, he shook the phone back and forth a few times and pressed the power button. Improbably, it beeped to life looking perfectly functional. He very deliberately locked the keypad, and put it back in his pocket.

"She does like you," Tim pointed out. "She wouldn't keep calling you if she didn't. She's better at avoiding people than that. On purpose, I mean."

"I know she likes me," Greg said. "But why, by the thrice-pinged gods of e-mail and the Ostrich of Ineptitude, can't she stay in one place for ten minutes on end?!"

"Because she's the Raccoon of Furtiveness."

"Yeah, yeah, I know." He turned to Julie. "So what was that about people calling me Greg explaining everything?"

"I told you," she said. "My friend and the laundry room. And I have other friends at other schools that I think have mentioned you."

"That doesn't explain everything," he said, confused. "That only explains what happened to your friend's laundry room."

"That was kind of what I meant," she said.

"Oh," he replied, sounding disappointed. "I was hoping you really knew a reason why my name explained everything. I've always wanted to be universally explicative."

"It's not your name," Tim said. "It's Rasputin's name. And you may have to give up on universally explicative and settle for internally consistent."

"That's better than you," Greg retorted.

"Guilty as charged," he agreed, yawning. "But that's all the hamsters' fault." He blinked and seemed to perk up. "Actually, it's all the fault of the Israelis!"

"What?!" Julie asked.

"You don't want to know," the ferret replied. "Well, actually, you probably do. But it's a long story and I've heard it before, so ask him later." He looked at Tim. "And watch what you say, or someone's going to hit you over the head with a divestiture petition."

Tim blinked again, more confusedly. "For saying that Israelis are responsible for mass dispersion of hamsters? It's historical fact."

"Yes, but – that's not exactly what you said."

"It means the same thing to me."

"Just trust me on this, okay?"

"Okay." He shrugged.

"It has to do with politics," Greg elaborated, as if feeling the need to make the matter clearer.

The hamster shuddered and wrinkled his nose. "Say no more."

"You don't like politics?" Julie asked.

"Hamsters don't even like each other," he said, making a face. "I mean, it's fun to watch other species acting weird and all, but only from a distance. I know which countries ban alcohol, and that's all I need to know." He took a swig of whatever it was he was holding. "And by the time I did figure it out, it'd be over and you'd be on to something else."

"Me?" Julie asked.

"Well, not you personally. But people like you."

"People like me?" she asked, getting more confused.

"Yeah," he said, waving his hands in the air. "Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, Seleucids. You, know – people."

"People generally? Like the human species?"

"Yes!"

"So why didn't you just say so?"

"I'm sorry," he said sincerely. "I forget not everyone is archetypal."