Written by Brian Illustrated almost all by Brian and Marc did the last one Long sharp beams of sunny sun shot through the soaring basement floor windows of 3rd grade, Catholic School. The desks were arranged in rows of two. I sat on the inside of the row nearest the windows. A prim snootish girl sat next to me. The air was perfectly normal. I was done with my work for the time being. My phonics lessons were complete. And impeccable. I impatiently spread a sheet of paper across my desk, clutched my pencil and jammed it into my imagination. On a day of 3rd Grade I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, drawing a monumental space battle. The battle was between the good, on one side, and evil, on the other. The good Nuculons had an array of ships with exquisite sleek and flowing lines. Note that The Greatest of the Nuculon vessels was a megacruiser called Nuculontitius ( heres one fraction of it). It was so majestic I had to tape 3 sheets of paper together to have room to draw it. (I often used dot matrix printer paper instead of taping) The evil Cly empire used relatively simple triangular ships that were no match for their foes's in either function or form. But they had numbers. By god they had numbers. Their ships were so easy to draw that about 5 Cly ships of the line could be manufactured in the time it took to make one Nuculon econo-fighter. The Cly, for all their faults, were practical and knew it was silly to waste time on making their ships sweet when they were just going to get fucking destroyed very quickly anyways. This brings me to the rich subject of explosions. By this time in 3rd grade, with diligence, I had developed a keen understanding of the way things tended to rupture, flare and shatter in space battles. These explosions weren't the pansy spark puff balls in Star Wars. These were spaceships not cans of gasoline. These explosions were grotesquely blooming flowers of chaotic complexity and rarely, if ever, were they spherical. Many would argue that I drew the best explosions in world. During a battle I was intensely focused. I had to keep track of dozens if not millions of variables unfolding at speeds sometimes faster than light. I had to coordinate the strategic and tactical aspects of the battle as well as enforce the laws of physics and empathize with each ships crew. External reality quietly receded as I flew and fought in my paper vacuum. Many battles were so exciting that I needed to punctuate events with suitable sound effects. Missiles, lasers, explosions, afterburners - these all deserved subvocalized accompaniments to add realism. It was only natural and followed logically from how awesome the battle was. The prim snootish girl sitting next to me did not understand. Nor did she try. She did not ask what I was doing or if it was important. She did not ask if I could perhaps not make explosion noises under my breath or at least make them more quietly. I would've! She refused to understand and thereby chose to hate. Contemptuously, she skulked up to the teacher's desk. I looked up when the teacher called my name for the third time and I saw the girl pointing at me. Suzanna Williams was her name and I will never forget, Suzanna, when you betrayed me, Suzanna. Pray Suzanna, pray as you often did, pray to St. Bryce* for only he can understand you now. Recently fate has played a cruel trick and engaged Suzanna and Marc to be married. And now Suzie dares ask to be in the Cave of Obscurity, citing some minor roles she botched in S is for Caesar. Sure Suzie. We'll put you in. Except instead of putting you in as Suzanna Williams, we'll do it under your true name as I truly know you: Suzie the Asshead Tattletale. * The Patron Saint of Regret

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