Myth-Told Tales

"How did it go?" Bu

"What's a tomato?" I asked curiously.

"A fruit that's been convinced it's a vegetable," Bu

"What's so important about it?" I pondered, staring up at the rectangular piece of glass on its plinth high above the judges' table. The magik that made it run drew constantly on the force line under the auditorium. Even at this distance I could clearly make out the pictures on its surface. People in brightly colored clothes performed appallingly embarrassing tasks for money. Bad singers that I could just hear over the din in the hall wailed out their tunes, and bad dancers tripped around, all within the confines of the glass box. And over all the noise coming from the Bub Tube was the inexplicable presence of raucous laughter. I hated it, but it was as fascinating to watch as a basilisk, and just as capable of freezing its prey in place. Darkness suddenly enveloped me. "Hey!" I protested.

"Sorry," Bu

"That's dangerous," I said. "Is there a way to control it?"

"Yes, there's a guide." Bu

I opened it and began to read the instructions. For a magikal item it had amazingly good documentation, down to a listing of the times various images would appear on the surface. "Wild Kingdom" interested me, "being the exploits of his noble yet mad majesty King Roscoe the Disturbed, and his Knights of Chaos."

"Bu

The contestants were unusually subdued as they prepared for the essay portion. None of the expected sniping was going on, dropping the sound level so low I could hear the inane chatter from the Bub Tube. Every one of the women were dressed in formal costumes, even the Trollops, for whom formal meant fewer body parts showing than usual. Bu

"You look wonderful," I said. "You're going to be a smash." Bu

I was, unfortunately, more immediately correct than I had anticipated. As soon as Bu

"Who do you think you are?" they demanded. One of them pushed her back against a mirror. "Red is our color! Klahds like you get blue!"

"I'm not a Klahd," Bu

"Then violet!" the chief Deveel woman said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

"No, green!" shouted another.

"Yellow! Yellow's for the Fay!"

The room stewards arrived, shouting to everyone to break it up. By the time I caught sight of her again, Bu

That was the last attack, magikal or otherwise, until the essay portion began. The first woman on stage was a Klahd.

"Good evening," she said, curtsying to the judges. "If crowned the wi

Out of nowhere a red sphere came hurtling, and splatted in the contestant's face.

"That's a tomato," Bu

It was a free-for-all. The poor Klahd hopped all over the stage, avoiding hot feet, kicking at snake-spiders that suddenly appeared and tried to crawl up her legs, shouting to be heard over booing from the audience, flushing sounds and greatly amplified intestinal noises. Swarms of sting-wasps buzzed around her, zooming for her face, her hands, any exposed flesh. The judges sat at their table, calmly marking score sheets and sipping tea poured for them by their attendants. They didn't move a finger to prevent the humiliation of the first contestant. Or the second. Or the third. The fifth essayist, the Gnome, simply wasn't there when rotten fruit came flying her way, but her continual disappearing and reappearing interfered with the delivery of her speech.

"... A benefit to all beings ... used only for good ... personally promise to dedicate the device ..."

Except for the direction the missiles were coming from, stature and skin color of the victim, er, participant, the speech, the ducking, and the humiliation of each woman was nearly identical. I began to feel sorry for the contestants. It would have tried even a seasoned politician to survive a pelting like that. I glanced at Bu

An Imper woman slunk off the stage, covered with yellow paint that had sloshed down on her from a bucket that clanged to the floor after depositing its contents on her head. The Pervect woman shoved past her, speech clutched in one scaly hand. She strode to the center of the stage, showed all her teeth and stuck a clawed finger out in the direction of her fellow contestants.

"If one single rotten vegetable," she roared, "one bucket of anything or one spell comes my way until I have finished reading this speech, every single one of you is going to be sorry!"

My ears rang with the sound of her voice, but she'd made her point. Except for resentful muttering, it was quiet in the auditorium. She showed all of her long teeth in a feral smile. I felt her build up a spell and cast it upon herself. It didn't feel like a charm of protection, rather one to aid eloquence.

"Now. Good evening, honored Trofi judges. I'm proud to be allowed to tell you my plans for the Bub Tube. In the interest of universal peace and the benefit of all living beings ..."

I gulped as the Pervect left the stage to applause by the usually stoic judges. If my plan didn't work, all the pent up resentment building through the duration of the Pervect's speech would rebound upon the very next person up, and that person was Bu

One of the things I'd learned in my perusal of the Bub Tube's operation manual was how the pictures it produced came into being. The original illusions flowed from the chaotic ether, or they could be superseded by ones that sprang from a magician's creative mind. Both kinds played out directly upon the front glass, known as the screen.

Following the instructions, I pointed the control wand at the glass. I focused the image that I'd had building in my mind. Bu

The first tomato came flying out of the crowd. With one hand I averted the dripping fruit from hitting Bu