Bulletproof
Part One: The Diamond Meet (page 2)

The psychotropic effects of Emily's bike lubricant made it difficult to stay aseat a penny farthing.

Unfortunately, from the front position, Emily was not able to discern the effect that the lubricant - or rather, the burning of the lubricant - using on her "spring-wound rotary propulsion thingy" was having on her opponents.

Modern chemists are still unsure why a mixture of graphite, cod oil and squirrel urine produces such a highly psychotropic compound when burned. They have wisely not tried to reproduce the effect. As the other cyclists laboured to catch up to Emily, breathing in the fumes, they started weaving, and soon, began falling off their penny farthings. The ones who remained conscious immediately gathered together, formed a human pyramid, and started singing Wagner's Die Walkure.

The incident at the second "Diamond Meet" had one other historical consequence: Lester Bertram Person, until that day an unassuming bank clerk, began a successful career as a cross-dressing opera singer. (Though he never got to play in a real opera-house, Person's act was always a hit at burlesque houses around North America.)

Modern physicists and biologists are still unsure as to how a group of chemically impaired Victorians could form a human pyramid, let alone race it around a baseball diamond, while they sang trumped-up, anti-Semitic, romanticized folk music. (5) These scientific mysteries aside, the race was soon over for Emily, who collected her diamond ring trophy. Meanwhile, the raceway was a scene of carnage. A number of fallen wheelmen were unconscious, while others had dropped out of the human pyramid, and were enacting the famous battle scene between Wotan and Hundig. Friends and relatives of the stricken racers tried to:

a) revive the unconscious
b) convince the victims of the lubricant-fumes that they were not svelte, Germanic warrior goddesses
c) leave the vicinity, never to mention that day again. (6)

One flaxen-haired youth didn't have anyone helping him, so Emily came to his aid. It was probably no coincidence that he looked every inch the Nordic warrior-god he presently thought he was. As she led him away (to what Emily later described in her short story, "The Ring Quest" as "an evening of intense, sweet, Norwegian-like debauchery") an observer in earshot of her uncle, Michael, guffawed: "now that is what I call a racy woman!"

The inventor was incensed. He turned to the lout, and not giving him any warning, kicked his steel-toed oxford into the man's groin. The erstwhile wag went down like a sack of buffalo flop, but he caught a good look at the distinctive Irishman as he did. Little did Flannigan know it at the time, but he'd just hoofed Petrolia Pete - the seventeenth fastest gun in the Southwest - right in the sweetbreads. (7)

--"Scholarship" by The Squire

Next: Part Two -- The Parkhill Shootout ...>

Notes:

5) All except for Dr. Vergmeister Zoot, who claims that squirrel's urine, taken in the right dosage imparts:

a) super-human strength
b) excellent balance
c) perfect pitch
d) a flawless command of the German language and no musical taste.

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6) This is probably why this incident does not appear in the historical record. [back]

7) Nads. [back]