Fable of Two Sailors

Her father had had excellent mustachios, Muriel mused, late in life.

Once he had given her a toy mongoose with shiny, emerald eyes.  He had bent his head down and she saw his hair was thinning on top like moss in late spring.  He said, a grave is a place where one is laid to wait for medical students.  That night he died near an open window on the northside of the house.  Arduous days came.

Muriel became a medical student & soonish, a doctor.  Mother had long since embalmed her emotions.  Anymore the only phrase she uttered with the slightest emotional patina was, "The violet & rose are languishing, yearning for a simple, single nibble."  At last, she languished completely, nibbling lukewarm snowpeas on an October afternoon merely nine days after Muriel's second trial wedding had taken place.  Her face assumed in death a great placidity, as of a coffin for undocumented epigrams.  Many neighbors brought wreaths, candles, and folded hands.  Everyone assumed many peaceful things.

Addicted to utterance of truth and common-sense, Muriel knew a voyage must be undertaken and a ship commissioned.  Friendship, she knew, was a ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.  She decided to undertake her journey as a lone wolf.

In preparation for the winter of her discontent, she dressed herself in sheep's clothing and Trojans.  At Woolworth's she spared no expense.

Across the sea, an accomplished blogger and amateur singularity theorist once lived on the 82nd floor of a Dubai high-rise.

His name was Keo and he passed his time in rigorous speculation and speculative rigorousness.  What he didn't think he knew about the coming singularity was hardly worth thinking you know it, for he possessed a monthly subscription to Wired (plus numerous backissues); and also, he had the Internet, a vast database of all that humanity had ever thought it knew. Thus, for his own protection, he needed to have a robot-dog, and the only place to get one of those, was on an island compound off the coast of Cuba.  Keo sailed promptly and laughed jollily.

Muriel was shipwrecked and loved.  Keo was shipwrecked and laughed.  At the last they both sputtered to the sky, "Will you return to me in a year and a day and become my captive, if I allow you to escape?"  Medical students make no trip to the sea.