Virgil sat in a corner, sipping Jack Daniels serenely and staring through the floor. Casimir stayed near Sarah, who stayed near Hyacinth. Other people stopped in from time to time, but I haven't written them into the following transcript– which has been rearranged and guessed at quite a bit anyway.

HYACINTH. The strike will get rid of Krupp. After that everything will be fine.

EPHRAIM. How can you say that! You think the problem with this place is just S. S. Krupp?

BUD. Sarah, how's your forest coming along?

EPHRAIM. Everywhere you look you see the society coming apart. How do you blame S. S. Krupp alone for that?

SARAH. I haven't done much with it lately. It's just nice to have it there.

CASIMIR. Do you really think the place is getting worse? I think you're just seeing it more clearly now that classes are shut down.

HYACINTH. You were in Professor Sharon's office during the piano incident, weren't you?

FRED FINE. What do you propose we do, Ephraim?

EPHRAIM. Blow it up.

CASIMIR. Yeah, I was right there.

HYACINTH. So for you this place has seemed terrible right from the beginning. You've got a different perspective.

SARAH. Ephraim! What do you mean? How would it help any-thing to blow up the Big U?

EPHRAIM. I didn't say it would help, I said it would prevent further deterioration.

SARAH. What could be more deteriorated than a destroyed Plex?

EPHRAIM. Nothing! Get it?

SARAH. You do have a point. This building, and the bureaucracy here, can drive people crazy– divorce them from reality so they don't know what to do. Somehow the Plex has to go. But I don't think it should be blown up.

FRED FINE. Have you ever computed the explosive power necessary to destabilize the Plex?

EPHRAIM. Of course not!

CASIMIR. He's talking to me. No, I haven't.

HYACINTH. Is that nerd as infatuated with you as he looks?

SARAH. Uh… you mean Fred Fine?

HYACINTH. Yeah.

SARAH. I think so. Please, it's too disgusting.

HYACINTH. No shit.

FRED FINE. I have computed where to place the charges.

CASIMIR. It'd be a very complicated setup, wouldn't it? Lots of timed detonations?

BUD (drunk). So do you think that the decay of the society is actually built into the actual building itself?

SARAH. The reason he likes me is because he knows I carry a gun. He saw it in the Caf.

EPHRAIM. Of course! How else can you explain all this? It's too big and it's too uniform. Every room, every wing is just the same as the others. It's a giant sensory deprivation experiment.

HYACINTH. A lot of those science-fiction types have big sexual hangups. You ever look at a science-fiction magazine? All these women in brass bras with whips and chains and so on– dominatrices. But the men who read that stuff don't even know it.

EPHRAIM. Did you know that whenever I play anything in the key of C, the entire Wing vibrates?

FRED FINE. This one worked out the details from the blueprints. All you need is to find the load-bearing columns and make some simple calculations.

EPHRAIM. Hey! Casimir!

CASIMIR. Yeah?

SARAH. What's scary is that all of these fucked-up people, who have problems and don't even know it, are going to go out and make thirty thousand dollars a year and be important. Well all be clerk-typists.

EPHRAIM. You're in physics. What's the frequency of a low C? Like in a sixty-four-foot organ pipe?

CASIMIR. Hell, I don't know. That's music theory.

EPHRAIM. Shit. Hey, Bud, you got a tape measure?

CASIMIR. I'd like to take music theory sometime. One of my professors has interesting things to say about the similarity between the way organ pipes are controlled by keys and stops, and the way random-access memory bits are read by computers.

BUD. I've got an eight-footer.

FRED FINE. This one doesn't listen to that much music. It would be pleasant to have time for the luxuries of life. In some D & D scenarios, musicians are given magical abilities. Einstein and Planck used to play violin sonatas together.

EPHRAIM. We have to measure the length of the hallways!

The conversation split up into three parts. Ephraim and I went out to measure the hallway. Hyacinth was struck by a craving for Oreos and repaired to the kitchen with a fierce determination that none dared question. Casimir followed her. Sarah, Fred Fine and Virgil stayed in the living room.

FRED FINE. What's your major?

SARAH. English.

FRED FINE. Ah, very interesting. This one thought you were in Forestry.

SARAH. Why?

FRED FINE. Didn't host mention your forest?

SARAH. That's different. It's what I painted on my wall.

FRED FINE. Well, well, well. A little illegal room painting, eh? Don't worry, I wouldn't report you. Is this part of an other-world scenario, by any chance? SARAH. Hell, no, it's for the opposite. Look, this place is already an other-world scenario.

FRED FINE. No. That's where you're wrong. This is reality. It is a self-sustaining ecosociosystem powered by inter-universe warp generators.

(There is a long silence.)

VIRGIL. Fred, what did you think of Merriam's Math Physics course?

(There is another long silence.)

FRED FINE. Well. Very good. Fascinating. I would recommend it.

SARAH. Where's the bathroom?

FRED FINE. Ever had to pull that pepper grinder of yours on one of those Terrorist guys?

SARAH. Maybe we can discuss it some other time.

FRED FINE. I'd recommend more in the way of a large-gauge shotgun.

SARAH. I'll be back.

FRED FINE. Of course, in a magical universe it would turn into a two-handed broadsword, which would be difficult for a petite type to wield.

Meanwhile Casimir and Hyacinth talked in the kitchen. They had met once before, when they had stopped by my suite on the same evening; they didn't know each other well, but Casimir had heard enough to suspect that she was not particularly heterosexual. She knew a fair amount about him through Sarah.

HYACINTH. You want some Oreos too?

CASIMIR. No, not really. Thanks.

HYACINTH. Did you want to talk about something?

CASIMIR. How did you know?

HYACINTH (scraping Oreo filling with front teeth). Well, sometimes some things are easy to figure out.

CASIMIR. Well, I'm really worried about Sarah. I think there's something wrong with her. It's really strange that she resigned as President when she was doing so well. And ever since then, she's been kind of hard to get along with.

HYACINTH. Kind of bitchy?

CASIMIR. Yeah, that's it.

HYACINTH. I don't think she's bitchy at all. I think she's just got a lot on her mind, and all her good friends have to be patient with her while she works it out.

CASIMIR. Oh, yeah, I agree. What I was thinking– well, this is none of my business.

HYACINTH. What?

CASIMIR. Oh, last semester I figured out that she was dating some other guy, you know? Though she wouldn't tell me anything about him. Did she have some kind of a breakup that's been painful for her?

HYACINTH. No, no, she and her lover are getting along wonderfully. But I'm sure she'd appreciate knowing how concerned you are.

(Long silence.)

HYACINTH (slinging one arm around Casimir's waist, feeding Oreo into his mouth with other hand). Hey, it feels terrible, doesn't it? Look, Casimir, she likes you a hell of a lot. I mean it. And she hates to put you through this kind of pain– or she wishes you wouldn't put yourself through it. She thinks you're terrific.

CASIMIR (blubbering).Well what the hell does it take? All she does is say I'm wonderful. Am I unattractive? Oh, I forgot. Sorry, I've never talked to a, ah

HYACINTH. You can say it.

CASIMIR. Lesbian. Thanks.

HYACINTH. You're welcome.

CASIMIR. Why can she look at one guy and say, "He's a friend," and look at this other guy and say, "He's a lover?"