ÿþ<html> <head> <title>PIE-IX: A Stitch in Time Saves Nine</title> <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="pie.css"> </head> <body leftmargin="0" topmargin="0"> <center> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" valign="center" width="702"> <tr><td> <table width="702" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td><img src="top.jpg" border="0"><br><img src="nav1.gif" border="0"><a href="index.html"><img src="nav2.gif" border="0"></a><a href="about.html"><img src="nav3.gif" border="0"></a><a href="story.html"><img src="nav4.gif" border="0"></a><a href="characters.html"><img src="nav5.gif" border="0"></a><a href="gallery.html"><img src="nav6.gif" border="0"></a><a href="contact.html"><img src="nav7.gif" border="0"></a><img src="nav8.gif" border="0"><br><table width="702" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr><td width="702" style="background: url(bbg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-y;"></a><center> <table width="680" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><td> <br> <img align="left" src="cogwheels.gif"><h3>Summary</h3> Since man came onto the scene, he brought with him definitions which<font face="times new roman"> </font>perhaps by definition<font face="times new roman"> </font>demand an opposite. Once there was good, there was evil. Once there was light, there was darkness. Once there was time, there was no-time. By imposing the system of twenty-four hours, supported by yet another system of time zones, man may have ended up destroying that which structures his world into day and night. Or maybe not. But Pie-IX is about this possibility. Irrational, illogical, and perhaps a little insane, Pie-IX brings you the story about a pinch of time-travel, a few servings of pie, and the occasional genre-warp. We suggest you sit back, have snacks handy, and enjoy the ride. <br><br> <font color="#DE2B0D">Ï%</font> The first book of Pie-IX is no longer in print nor for sale. However, a new format <i>is</i> in the works!<br> Keep on eye on the site for information and updates. <br><br><br> <h3>A Story Snippet</h3> <sub><table width="680"> <tr><td width="330">The guy with stubble was coming toward him. His t-shirt said <I>Ask me about my tangerines.</I> <br><br> "Hey. You're new around here, aren't you. Unless I am, which would be kinda weird." <br><br> Nine didn't say anything.  <br><br> "I can see I've surprised you. That's understandable. You probably thought you were alone. Well, you're not. Hey, hello, hi."  <br><br> Nine contemplated the strange sour lump that formed cold in his stomach.  <br><br> "Man, you're a talker. I could do this all day. Favorite color? That nice pie-crust brown. Favorite number? Nine. Favorite character from a fairytale? That girl with all the hair and the tower and the window. You know. Favorite lunch meat? Bologna."  <br><br> Nine was going to be late.  <br><br> "Favorite kind of cookie? The ones they sell door to door, with coconut in 'em, and the little chocolate stripes. I don't like movies, I like to do things myself. Hey, same with reading. Favorite milkshake? Banana. Favorite kind of pie? That's the toughest one yet. I don't think I have one. I don't think I could have one."  <br><br> Nine contemplated making a break for it, jumping through the ninth cog and getting out of there. That wouldn't solve the problem of the intrusion. That wouldn't change the guy with stubble, who'd pulled himself up onto cog ten and was sitting cross-legged in the middle of it, going round and round and round. The guy with stubble kept his eyes fixed on Nine even while he rotated. Alcohol brown eyes. Apple-pie brown eyes. Upholstery brown eyes.  <br><br> "So, what's a smooth-talker like you doing in a place like this?" <br><br> Nine made a break for it.  <br><br> Head first, he thought. That's the way to go. The guy with stubble anticipated his jump and lunged after him, and got him by the ankles. Nine hit his forehead against the cog and felt, for a moment, the foggy dizzy whirlpool rush of time sucking on his skin, trying to pull him out into the world again. Then the fingers on his socks gave a good hard yank and he went flying backwards instead. He knocked into something like a chest, got caught up in a tangle of something like arms, fell through the honeyed embrace of between time and landed, hard, in a pile of garbage. <br><br> "Ow, shit, that was great!" said the guy with stubble as they started to roll. <br><br> Nine had once knocked a pile of garbage down. It had worked out rather well for him, actually. There were few situations in which an avalanche of trash could end pleasantly and, figuring he'd cornered the market on those, he hadn't ever tried toppling a crap mountain again. This was the kind of random accident Nine sought to avoid. This was the kind of unpredictability Nine hated. This was the kind of thing Nine expected when it came to knocking a pile of garbage down, suffocating in a sudden wave of bike handles and hubcaps and speakers and keyboards and telephone cords and pen caps and teapots and mug handles and funnels and cages and dinner plates and collapsed strollers and the occasional woebegone eternally dead rat. But Nine could resign himself. He'd done it once before when he was much younger. It was always possible to accept any fate, even the smell of rust and rain-eaten metal and lonely forgotten empty things, relics of the past, symbols of the future, unnecessary and outdated. He, too, could be like that. He, too, could conquer the quiescence of the truly abandoned, the garbage of the world, the junkyards of the universe. He, too, was no more than a momentary shell<font face="times new roman"> </font>and sore from the sudden tumble of sharp-edged objects from above, and growing a lump on the forehead from where he'd slammed into the smooth greasy inside of a well-oiled cog.  <br><br> "You're just gonna <I>lie</I> there?"  <br><br> Hands with smooth fingers found his wrists and pulled him, gasping and bloody-nosed, up into the startlingly clean air.  <br><br> "What the hell are you doing? Trying to drown on me like that. You are <I>bleeding.</I>"  <br><br> The guy with stubble had a telephone cord half-wrapped around his neck, like a noose or a necklace or a scarf. He took the bridge of Nine's nose between his thumb and his forefinger and pinched, while Nine slipped his tongue out and tasted the blood that pooled in his frenum.  <br><br> "Don't eat that. That's disgusting. What the hell<font face="times new roman"> </font>no. Food is for eating, blood is for bleeding. Get that right and you're on your way."  <br><br> "Stop."  <br><br> Nine swiped at his hand and pushed it away at the elbow, stopping his nose up himself with the cuff of his sleeve. For a moment, it stung. Then it just throbbed. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. He could imagine his blood slowly shifting directions with the persuasion of gravity, draining deep into his head instead of out through his nose. If there was a place where that blood was stored, did it explode if you put it back in instead of letting it out? A long time ago he'd dreamed of his whole skull swelling to accommodate his brain the more he learned, and his chest with everything he welcomed into his heart. Then, certain he would stay heavy and immobile and misshapen, he'd woken up. Nine brought his head back down. His nose had stopped bleeding. </td> <td width="20">&nbsp;</td> <td valign="top" width="330"> "Well, OK, hi," the guy with stubble said. "My name's Fynn. There's something on your forehead. Underneath the lump." He reached out. When Nine jerked away he was ready for it and grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him back and touched the tattoo above his right eyebrow with a soft thumb. "It's a tattoo? I thought it was lint. You have any more of these? Lying around anywhere?" His breath smelled of peaches, real peaches, not manufactured peaches like in soda and sticky candy. He was too close. Nine recoiled and felt the blood he'd gotten out of his nose get hot and uncomfortable. "Where do you have your tattoos? It could be like a game. I could guess, and you could tell me when I'm right. Or not. What kind of guy are you? You can tell a lot about someone by his tattoos, or you can tell a lot about someone's tattoos by the someone. Where do you have your tattoos? Hip? Ankle? Stomach? Neck?"  <br><br> "Stop," Nine said again.  <br><br> "I X." <I>Eye ex.</I> "Roman numeral number nine. Are you a number person? Are you a Roman? Are you a numeral? You're not doing anything funny with numbers, are you?"  <br><br> "I'm late."  <br><br> "Should I call you that? Is it short for something?"  <br><br> "Nine."  <br><br> "Actually, it's probably more like nine-fifteen. Doesn't your head hurt?"  <br><br> "Yes."  <br><br> "Do you want me to get you some ice?"  <br><br> "No." <br><br> "'Cause head wounds like that are dangerous, you know. You could wake up one morning and find out you're dead. Well, not dead, probably, but you could wake up one morning and try to lift your head and then you could die. It depends. If you have a small skull, a bang on the head could make your brain swell up too big for the bone around it, and then you'll start drooling and talking funny and your loved ones won't know what's happening to you. It'll freak them out. I'd take you to a hospital, but I don't believe in them. Do you believe in hospitals?"  <br><br> "They're hospitals."  <br><br> Fynn grinned. "I guess so! But that doesn't mean you have to believe in them. Just because they are."  <br><br> "Are?"  <br><br> "Hospitals. That doesn't mean anything. What's a hospital, anyway, if it isn't itself? So take away the hospital and there's nothing there. Anyway, Late, it's getting late. It's probably nine-twenty already. I'd like to make that head wound up to you. Do you like pie?"  <br><br> "What?"  <br><br> "Not that I make it myself. I leave that up to the professionals." Nine would have gotten a headache, but Fynn spoke slowly. His sentences and even his words inside his sentences all oozed into one another like motor oil spilled by the side of the road, like one puddle into the next on a downhill slope, like two stains too close together. "But<font face="times new roman"> </font>you've had it before?<font face="times new roman"> </font>it's fruit, and then, you know, some seasoning, depending on the baker. You put it inside a crust, which is sort of like bread and sort of like cake and sort of like nothing else in the world, and bake it all up. Then you eat it. Sometimes, with ice cream."  <br><br> "Yes."  <br><br> "You want some now?"  <br><br> "No."  <br><br> "That's OK, I'll have your slice. Come on."  <br><br> "I'm late."  <br><br> "You said that already. Who cares? That's not what time is for. Come on."  <br><br> "No."  <br><br> "No one turns down pie. It's pie. And pie I believe in. When you take away the pie there's nothing there, except for the crumbs of course, but at least you're full. Come on."  <br><br> "Where?"  <br><br> "That's more like it. I know a place." Fynn untangled the telephone cord from around his neck and proffered it like a gift. "A pimento, a memento, Sacramento," he said. Nine didn't know what else to do and before his brain could communicate with his arm he reached out to take it. For the second time Fynn grabbed him by the collar. "Collarbone." Nine stumbled forward, telephone cord in his hand. Fynn pulled his shirt away from his skin and suddenly his hair was in Nine's mouth as he peered inside. "Hey," he said. "Look at that. I was right. Collarbone."  <br><br> "Stop," Nine said.  <br><br> Fynn let go. "Come on." <br><br><br> <center><img src="cog.gif"></center> </td></tr></table> </td></table> </center> </td> </table></td></tr> </td> <td><img src="bottom.gif" border="0"> </td> </tr> </table> </td></tr> </table> </center> </body> </html>