continued…

He began quietly and slowly, “Who in this room of supposedly venerated and querulously non-inductively pre-eminent scholars,” he finished in a literal howling, screech, “has made the unverifiable claim that this chair does in unquestionable fact exist?!”

The other speakers averted their eyes and nervously fidgeted with their papers. They looked very much to me like guilty school children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. No one answered.
The jumping speaker was groggily regaining consciousness. He sat up, moaning and holding his head. The tallest speaker took note of his colleague stirring on the floor, picked up the chair he had pulled out from under him and handed it to the previously jumping speaker.

He said, “Eat this”.

The speaker on the floor took the chair from the tallest speaker and started chewing on one of the legs.

I turned away in disgust. Facing the door I noticed for the first time letters carved above it. I looked up at the marble plaque hung high on the wall above the entrance door. The moonlight admitted grudgingly from between the thin window slots that broke up the dome shown on parts of the words. Though dim, I could clearly read them: To the undaunted pursuit and establishment of Truth.

I had seen enough. There were no answers for me here. I walked toward the door.
As I opened it to let myself out I heard one of the speakers rise and begin in a stumbling, halting, tentative voice start to speak again.

“As it were not but until the vociferous non-qualification of the previously unhitherto admission of reductive quasi-ubiquitousness that we, one or many of a probable statistical quantitative unspecified grouping should but not qualitatively assert…”

I wandered aimlessly around the university section of town for a few minutes thinking. I was in no hurry to get anywhere before the moon set. I wasn’t worried about finding my way through the confusing maze of streets because soon enough I would be leaving. And no matter where I was in Sleepytown when it was time to go, I would wind up back in bed safe and sound.

I used to love Sleepytown. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I do still love parts of it. As for the other parts…

One of these days I’m going to straighten those parts that are diminishing its potential for complete grandeur. Yes, sir, that’s a fact, one these days very soon. Perhaps I’ve already started.

The End