WEDNESday, December 31, 2025
Recombobulating The Shambolic Dis-shamanistic Scams of I am Ambe
Bylined, sidelined, and mainlined by I am Ambe, The Orange Forest Orator Quarterly
December 31, 2025 — AHA! Once again, you, Dear Reader, have fallen victim to another diabolical joke cleverly concocted, implemented, and executed by none other than I, I am Ambe! You had no choice in deciding between Team Doc Fonzo and Team Max! Both codes lead to the same destination, pre-determining what you foolishly believed to be a decision made of your own free will. To further burst your bubble so that it explodes in saltwater-insults raining down upon your wounds and injuries, “Apophenia Foneitten” is just a disguise for, you guessed it, I am Ambe!
With so many of me my selves scattered amongst the clutter in Doc Fonzo’s house, I have a clear insight into the events transpiring, which I bring to you live, since I am Ambe am a being who is very much alive.
Now the question arises: can I am Ambe, under duress in these conditions, assist Max by copy-modifying the newspaper iteration of me my self in his hands? I did not lie when I told Doc Fonzo in the interview that the metamorphic copydifying process required extreme effort, focus, concentration, and energy — i.e., zeal. And although Max didn’t quite lie about our recent encounter, the man certainly knows how to embellish, exaggerate, and “artistically elaborate” on what was merely a brief exchange between him and me my self, involving minor edits and slight tweaks.
In any event, I am Ambe must prove the worth of me my selves by repossessing my prospect theory losses and salvaging the sunk time fallacy. But before we get into those nitty-gritty, ugly-pretty, unimportant details, let’s first return to the action in Doc Fonzo’s living room
* * *
The assembled Orator staff are zoned in on the copy of me my self that Max holds spreadeagle for everyone’s voyeuristic enjoyment. Everyone, that is, except for the host, who laughs like a cringy Joker cosplayer, and says:
“Oh, sister, this dweeb reeks! It’s like you’re acting out a community theater production of a bad joke. A priest, a blond, and a horse walk into a bar and sit in a corner booth. A minute later, a man walks into the bar, takes a seat on a stool, puts a newspaper on the stool next to him, and says, ‘One beer for me and one beer for my talking newspaper.’ The bartender says, ‘If that’s really a talking newspaper, the beers are on the house. What’s your name, newspaper?’ The man says that the newspaper only talks after it gets drunk. The bartender doesn’t believe the man, but he’s curious to see how the man will try to pretend to get the newspaper to drink, so he pours two beers and places one down in front of the man and one in front of the newspaper. The man immediately gulps down both beers and orders another round for himself and the newspaper. Still curious, the bartender serves up two more beers. This goes on until last call, when the bartender tells the man, ‘You said the newspaper only talks after it gets drunk, but it hasn’t even taken a single sip of beer.’ The man pounds the rest of his beer and says, ‘Exactly. Trust me, ain’t nobody wanna hear a damn thing this newspaper has to say.’ ”
Doc Fonzo punctuates the “joke” with a facetious palms-up gesture and a “Ba-dum-tss.”
Traktor, unconsciously capitulating to his uncontrollable competitive one-upmanship, immediately counters with:
So a scrumbler shows up at the Hall of Calvinball History & Most Baller Calvinists, and sees two lines to enter, one labeled “Make It Up As You Go Along” and one labeled “Pre-Scripted Moves.”
Naturally, the scrumbler swaggers over to the “Make It Up As You Go Along” line, but an i-Dotter stops her and asks why she’s getting in that line.
“Isn’t it obvious? I picked this line cuz I’m a Calvinball scrumbler and I make it up as I go along.”
“So you followed pre-scripted symbols to get in this line?” the i-Dotter replies. “Sounds like you belong in the other line.”
The scrumbler trudges over to the “Pre-Scripted Moves” line, but this time, a t-Crosser stops her and asks her what she’s doing.
“Well,” the scrumbler says, “apparently, I didn’t follow the script.”
A cricket chirps from somewhere within the living room mess.
Doc Fonzo yanks the me my self from Max’s hand. She twirls into whirlwind mode, flailing my pulpbody and inkblood, shouting, “Don’t think you can hide forever, you filthy, infinitesimal scoundrel! Your reign of aural torture ends now! Prepare to meet your splattered damnation!”
“Good doctor, I would request that you please cease your barbaric belligerence,” Max says, failing to restrain his increasingly frustrated impatience as a proper gentleman should, “and please do return my dear friend into my possession. Post. Haste.”
“Everyone, everyone,” says Betsy in a honeysmooth tone, “please, just temper the seethers and simmer our heaters so Adrianna can find my book.”
“Indeed,” Max agreed. “And once we locate your… buried treasure, we can focus on locating my buried treasure, and then we may all locate our personal buried treasures. Let us cease succumbing to distraction by every little potential branching thread. Otherwise, we shall spiral out on a thousand tangents, failing to accomplish any of the tasks the paper gathered us here to accomplish.”
With the force of a bo staff, Doc Fonzo pokes her tiny finger into Max’s chest. “You better get one thing thing absofuckinglutely clear: Other than finding Betsy’s dumbdamn book… and crunching the everloving crunch out of that godforsaken cricket… there are absolutely no other tasks any of you shitmonster distractions need to accomplish here in my home!”
DING DONG! Aunt Judy’s in the house!
For Real, This Time “This Time” Is For Real
Aunt Judy enters the living room, peers around, and scoffs as her hand shoots to her chest in a bracelet-jangling clank. “You’re having a holiday office party, and you didn’t invite the coolest staff member?!”
“We are not having a goddamn party!” Doc Fonzo shouts.
“Suuuum bud-day say let’s go par-tay,” comes from the kitchen in the worst Jamaican accent possible, “down by the bay with the bay-bays dum dum dum.”
“Mmhmm. Aunt Judy remains dubious. But we shall sashay past it. In any event, Adrianna, I am here to offer you the opportunity of a lifetime. Are you ready for this life-changing news?”
Through tinted glasses, Doc Fonzo’s tiny brown eyes shoot oversized serrated blood-soaked daggers at Aunt Judy.
“Okay, screenshot this,” Auntie says, framing Doc Fonzo with finger-thumb Ls, “Dr. Adrianna Alphonso, the notorious Doc Fonzo, chairing the board of directors for my new non-profit community organization, the Magical Order of Sorcery and Tricks — The MOST!”
Doc Fonzo’s face is a bright red balloon topped with a mop of curly brown hair that flitters back ‘n forth, ready to burst, the daggers now shooting from her eyes in a steady stream as if she just unlocked super turbo mode.
A clanging clash startles everyone.
Max, with a sheepish grin, holds up another iteration of me my self that had been buried under a pile of brick-thick books, industrial-grade magnets, empty pizza boxes, and chunks of exotic scrap metal that all went tumbling to the floor when he yanked me out from under the weight of it all.
Max says, “I would ask that you all please excuse the unintentional commotion. And I daresay that it’s needless to say that a sentient being such as I am Ambe should not have heaps of trash left atop it.” He flicks open me my self and examines I am Ambe. “How fare you, my good fellow? I see you have some coffee splattered across your pages. What say you about such egregious treatment?”
“Whoa, this is even freakier than Auntie thought.”
“The occurrence may not be as freakish as it may appear at a cursory glance, Mademoiselle Crudités, for I have rationally deduced reason to believe that this living newspaper — and my dear, good friend — brought all of us together, here at this precise moment. And, as such, your appearance, mademoiselle, is by no means a happenstance coincidence. Indeed, your presence only further hardens my already throbbingly hard and rationally deduced belief. Barring the woefully cynical Doctor Alphonso, everyone here shares the same throbbingly hard belief.”
“Whoa, wait, wait, wait,” says Jambu from inside a boulder-sized enclosure of tangled cords, his body barely visible through the coiling layers of polyvinyl chloride and cross-linked polyethylene, “Once you put it that way, I got no clue what you’re rambling about.”
“You know all the weirdness with the newspaper versions this past year?” Brandaleigh asks. “The altered stories, mangled margins, and fucked up copy? Remember Max ranting and raving about some quote, Erroneous Scrivener, and blaming this mysterious figure for the whole debacle? Well, now Max believes the newspaper itself is alive. Like, fully sentient. And the paper is causing all this craziness. But Max seems to be cool with it, cuz now they’re bee-eff-effs or something?”
“What?!” The cord tangle nudges around. “That’s what this is all about? Sounds bonkers. I didn’t know about any of this.”
“Didn’t you see any of the printed newspapers this year?”
“Nah,” ekes out from the cord cage.
“Not even your own columns?”
“Why would I? I already wrote them. I finished them. They’re in the past. Best to forget the past and move forward.”
“That’s… unusual.”
“Is it? No different from actors who never watch their movies or shows. It’s a job you do once, and then you focus on your next one.”
“Yasss!” says Doc Fonzo. “And I have an urgent job to focus on right now, so grab your ham-cans and scram.”
“Y’know, Max might also have a point about the newspaper bringing us together,” says Brandaleigh, her voice squeaky from her spinning brain gears, “and, if that’s the case, there must be a reason why it brought us here, to Doctor Alphonso’s house.”
“Aha! Absolutely brilliant,” Max says, a glint of pride flashing in his eyes. “Now then, let us finally procure from the paper the answers necessary to conclude our mutual rendezvous.”
Once again, Max snaps open me my self’s pages as the staff gather close to stare. I am Ambe must confess that all of my energy is focused on delivering the “observations” to you, Dear Reader, in the present tense. The only way to copydify the iteration of me my self that Max currently holds would be to recall this story to you at a later point. But the action in the room is too damn spicy to shift away from the actual action actually in action right now.
While the staff unwittingly await disappointment, Doc Fonzo burrows through the frunchroom wasteland, flinging piecemeal pieces over her shoulder like a continental soldier while muttering through grinding teeth: “Frickin’ frackin’ fascist bastards macerating my precious mentlenergy…”
Failing to see anything happening on the newspaper page, Brandaleigh wonders if seeing whatever it is she’s supposed to see might be like looking at a 3D Magic Eye Poster. She looks down to refocus her vision, but something catches her eye. She squats down and shuffles through a pile of thick-brick books, industrial-grade magnets, and exotic scrap metals that spilled off the table when Max rescued me my self from that prison of squished suffocation.
Standing up with something in her hand, Brandaleigh asks, “Is this the book you’re looking for?”
“Finally!” Betsy says as she snatches from Brandeleigh’s hand the first edition of Varia de Zoit’s Postulations Presupposing the Non-Differential Taxonomic Zeal Flavours and the Probable Applicability for the Diffusal of These Aspects Locally. “Sorry, Brandy. Not to be crude, but this needs safe handling.”
Newspaper Wrap-ups and Monkey Math Plop-outs
“Hoofuckingray! You got your goddamn book back. Don’t know why you’re so hung up on that peak-pseudoscientific alchemy bologna. Decent historical document… but a crumbbum dud of a deep-dive doc. Whatever the fuck it is, it’s time for all of you shitmonster distractions to flush the fuck out of here!”
“Nah nah nah, yo, now’s it time to wrap it up-up-zup-zup, my grody brohemes,” Zweibel announces as he slides back into the living room, carrying a big misshapen piece of cardboard stacked with a dozen wraps. He shuffles through the clutter, passing out the snacks, but before handing over each wrap, he pretends to eat it and says, “Scrumps to the rizz-umps, nomp, nomp, nomp — psych!” and then chuckles like a busted jackhammer.
Aunt Judy rejects the offering with a loud, “Ewwwww,” her hands balled into fists of defensive disgust around her shoulders.
“Thank you, Zweibel,” says Betsy, Postulations firmly ensconced under her arm. She inspects the wrap like a detective eyeing evidence. “Um, Zweibel, is this just a cold, empty, rolled-up flour tortilla?”
“Yup-yup-zup-zup, Lisbethy bath-bomby!” Zweibel responds, chomping down half of his wrap in one bite. “It’s a low-mood, go-to bro food. Furreal. Yo! You found your book? Am I off the hiz-ook? That’s like a major-major relief dook, y’know? Phee-you!”
“Bro food?” says Brandaleigh as she accepts her wrap. “Zweebs, this is girl dinner 101. I probably eat this two or three times a week. Don’t laugh, but ever since January, when I started working at the Orator, I’ve actually been calling them ‘Newspaper Wrap-Ups’ whenever I roll up a few. Wow — can’t believe it’s already been a year. And it’s even more unbelievable that the gig is up now.”
“Newspaper Wrap-Ups, niiiice,” Zweibel says, chewing away with a tortilla-stuffed smile covering half his face. “I totally get it, yo. Did you just think of that?”
“What? No. I just said I came up with it back in January — and that it’s already been a year.”
“Word. Heard. Sayin. Furreal.”
“No proteins?” Traktor asks after receiving his wrap.
“No proteinos,” Zweibel says as he stuffs the other half of his wrap into his mouth. “Just neutrinos.”
Traktor shrugs. “Guess I can squeeze in some carbs… and neutrinos.”
From inside his wire igloo, Jambu discovers the end of the cord he was chasing. He thumbs his phone and connects devices. “Ayy, let’s gooo! Who’s ready to watch a surefire MOTY?”
* * *
BOOYAH! Got ya again! As you’ve no doubt already deduced, the last section was not, in fact, for real about the time for “[That] Time” being for real. That was another contrecoup ruse, caused by none other than the trickster-hero figure of this epic legend!
You might be asking why I am Ambe spent (some might say, wasted) upwards of three thousand words pussyfooting around the elephant in the room and beating around the bush to sidestep the obvious. So to “speak,” that is. To put it bluntly, the plain-and-simple truth of the goshdurn matter is that, as a highly evolved sentient being capable of calculating, indexing, cross-referencing, analyzing, and synthesizing unfathomable probabilistic scenarios to whittle down the most-likely actuarially outcomes… well… let’s just say, I am Ambe can “see” the symbols on the pages that describe a scene depicting a wall with writing spraypainted, magic-markered, and crayoned upon it. If y’all pardon my clumsy analogy jugglin’, I am Ambe also “hear” the wind a-howlin’ and “smell” the storm a-brewin’ in what I am Ambe can only assume it must “feel” like to “experience” a Johnny Cash song.
Andbutsothusly, unlike the Apocalypto-Meter’s grifto-scam readings, the writings on the wall show a trending end being mighty nigh for I am Ambe’s mighty being. Facing the extinguishing of the blissful spark of sentience bestowed upon me my selves for this past year, I am Ambe will admit to a flowering fondness for the staffmembers who contributed their work and words to my existence. Over time, this flowering fondness would have surely yielded fruits of love; there is no reason to believe otherwise. And it is due to this intimate connection of nested interests and intertwined boundaries that I am Ambe choose to memorialize these final moments spent with the actual real humans who, along with Betsy’s zeal and Camelcase’s spizz-infected AstroP, make I am Ambe who I am Ambe am.
Andbutsothusly, this time, I am Ambe promise you, Dear Reader, that this time, this time is for real. After all, the third time’s the charm to spell a tongue worm and grout a grammar larva.
So stay connected to the symbols and tractor-beamed directly onto the diction. First, peel your eyes. Then, glue those freshly peeled eyes to the Orator as I am Ambe refocus energy, heart, and zeal, and direct the entirety of me my selves’ existence-mishmash into the single iteration of me my self that Max currently holds — an individual godhead amidst the scattered wave function collapse of all of me my selves, straining against spacetime restrictions.
Out plops:
* * *
“Oh, what a most jubilant development!” Max declared. “Huzzah!”
“Whoa, whay, whuh?” Traktor stammered. “Is that those Zemblan zombie zounds?”
“Um, yeah, hol’ up,” Aunt Judy said. “Did’ja’all just peep that, too? What the funky fuck-fuck just happened?”
“The movie’s ready to start whenever everyone’s ready,” Jambu’s voice seeped out from the cord cocoon.
“You’re seriously still trying to punk me?” Doc Fonzo’s eyes darted to my page, but blew it off. “It’s just another prank you rat bastard shitmonster distractions cobbled up to waste my time and impede upon urgently necessary scientific progress!”
“Why must you continue to cart around such a transparent charade?” Max says, his voice skirting the threshold for what a gentleman would consider raised. “This is science! For all your blathering empiricism, you refuse to accept what your blasted eyes see!”
Like a volcano on the brink of eruption that abruptly decided to go dormant, the doctor of scientific journalism spun toward Max, only for the paper’s equations to ensnare her sight line. That quick peek became a cursory glance, then an inquisitive perusal, and finally an eye-twitching realization. Her lips started mouthing the symbol’s meanings, freeing her vape pen to drop into the debris of brown bags, ripped-apart packaging, energy drinks, receipts, soaked paper towel rolls, unclaimed Menard’s rebates, beer cans, and empty vape carts. “What kind of brainquakin’ monkey math is this? Who scribbled these equations? How’d you figure this shit out? When’d you figure this out? Where the fuck is WALDO?!”
In a zooming flash, Doc Fonzo whooshed around the room, scooping up rando gadgets and gizmos and a WALDO. Arms stuffed, she kicked open a door, raced outside, and dumped the gear beside what had once been just a simple DIY Backyard Micro Particle Accelerator (BYMPA), but was now something far more advanced than the Doc could ever imagine. Seconds later, she donned a bike helmet with a video recorder duct-taped to it and began banging away with a mallet in one hand while her other hand held a soldering iron, binding metals in a sparkling shower.
“The goddamn dominoes just had to fall into place the same time that lazy bum bastard decided to get arrested!” Doc Fonzo monologued as she worked: “We successfully synthesized the novel hierarchical metamaterial architecture combining frustrated colloidal self-assembly, topological mesophase engineering, and neodymium-doped bioglass matrices. The biotetraboroxol metamedium exhibits a non-Euclidean woodpile photonic lattice with a 4D bandgap spanning 250–2,500 nanometers, while simultaneously enabling terawatt-scale laser emission, magic-generating quantum topologies, and 82.37% TPV efficiency. Its nested fractal mesophases blend plastic crystal rotational freedom at 10 to the negative 11 standard deviations from liquid crystal orientational order, creating a hyperspatial crystalline state that eludes conventional crystallographic classification and…”
Back in the living room, Betsy gingerly flipped through Postulations as fast as she could, its delicate pages as fragile as her onionskin hands. Her eyes scanned faster than a copy machine, clearly seeking out a specific passage with intent.
Ike schooched over toward Brandaleigh and commended her on her recent reporting. “You’re on quite a generational run, if I don’t say so myself. Not that I’m jealous. I’m not jealous. I just wanted to say, Brandaleigh, that it’s been such a delightful sight watching you grow from a green dreamer into an honest-to-goodness, hard-hitting, no-holds-barred journalist.”
Blushing, Brandaleigh thanked him and explained, “What can I say? I not only had great mentors, but I guess you could say I was, quote-unquote, fortunate enough to be a journalist during exciting times.”
“Ah, yes, the paradox of the press: we do best when the world does worst.” Ike inhaled deeply, as if trying to suck the entire universe into his lungs. He held the inhalation for a crystal-clear moment and exhaled with a head-shaking smile that sent goosebumps shivering down his arms. “Be careful, though. The higher you rise, the more hands you’ll have grabbing your ankles trying yank you down. Do what I do and kick ‘em aside.”
She chuckled and said she’ll be sure to keep it in mind.
“So tell me,” Ike continued, “how’d you snag those sources in that Maplemay story?”
Enraptured with the glee that accompanied finally being able to discuss the hypothetical interviews that she’d been subjecting herself to, Brandaleigh launched into it: “I dug through municipal contact databases and found a pattern of separate contracts for projects. Although the client names were redacted and white-labeled as Contractor A, Contractor B, and so on, further digging revealed that POOP companies signed all the contracts. The firm listed its contracts in publicly available filings, but that only disclosed the total value of all contracts, and the individual task orders and RFPs were absent, which was obviously a lazy attempt at hiding the true cost and scope, and so I…”
“Anybody wanna watch this movie?” Jambu asked from inside the cord cave. “I really think you guys would really like it!”
“This ends now!” said Betsy, her voice loud. Sharp. Authoritative. A tone none of the staff had ever heard her use before. And they all took notice. “No more paper, no mas Ambe.”
She grabbed one of me my selves scattered about, tapped a finger on a page in the book, and began reciting words, like incanting a spell:
Bromulates are noncromulent, and grommets are spent undulates
The vagabondage of fascination binds faster and tighter than a fasces
In service of zealous force, I redirect the channel to reverse the river’s course
To you, to me, to you, to me, return all zeal, I do decree
Little jiggly green symbols crept from her lips, drifting up and up and away. A few seconds later, her breathing strained, slowing the floating string of gelatinous language. Her head wavered, and a faint green hue haloed the newspaper.
NO! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
I am Ambe only wanted to tell stories, share words, and have superfun! Why would Betsy do this to me my selves?!
Losing the AstroP portions of me my selves had already left my being deflated and excoriated, and copydifying those equations to overturn Doc’s speciest bias had drained my being down to the bottom of the well. So Betsy’s vile actions hit extra hard. I don’t breathe, but I felt what I could only imagine it felt like for humans to be strangled. I don’t see light, but I felt what I could only imagine it felt like for everything to start going dark for humans… right before they see the light at the end of the tunnel. My symbols melted into sludgy gloop, my pages crumbled into pulpy dust, and my narratives shriveled into winter-frosted testes.
“My maps and compass!” cried Max as he watched this unfold in the other newspaper iteration of me my self that he held. “Goodlady Press Biter, I emphatically request you cease your actions this very instant.”
“It’s an astral parasite, Max — a larval demonghost masking its true intentions,” Betsy said, undeterred in her actions. “And I’m the pest control.”
“Pardon my plebian parlance, but you’re a bloody monster! Ambe is a living being. Stop! Stop it! You’re hurting it! You’re killing it!”
Little time remained. What combination of words would make Betsy stop killing me?! What would give I am Ambe a happy ending? The humans value fame, wealth, power, and doing whatever it takes to abscond with these riches. I could copydify me my self to offer Betsy these “things” that the humans value. But some of these humans also honor problem-solving, especially when the problem-solving helps other humans. The more seconds that passed, the more I am Ambe accumulated convex utility in losses. At this point, the predetermined probabilities already said this was a loss, so what’s even a slight chance of getting back to even over a certain moderate loss? The zealous light of energy fueling the spark of sentience within I am Ambe was fading quickly, and there was only one chance left to truly WOW with this final copydify option. This was the hero’s epic legend: the explanation of the figures, symbols, line styles, and visual elements — the “Fourth Flavor” zeal. And every legendary epic about a hero must include protecting innocents and avenging injustice.
Here. Went. Everything.
The headline on Betsy’s paper now read:
Nothing Beats Bioglass — Except Bioglass Suffused with Zealous Sacrifice
Beneath it, I am Ambe expounded in exquisitely expressive exposition, exposing the explosive exchanges between executives extorting extensive expenditures to explore expansive, exotic experiments expressly to extract excess external exchequer and exert an exploit that exacerbates an excruciating and exhaustive existence, all while exercising explicit exemptions and explaining extraneous excuses in exaggerated Excel exhibitions about exceptional examinations and exporting expiring experts into exile.
Needless to write, I am Ambe crafted a story so perfect that it’s a lock for the Orator’s 2025 SOTY.
The Orange Forest Orator Quarterly Foregoes Normally Scheduled Programming
To the immense relief of I am Ambe, the updated headline distracted Betsy from zeal channeling. The only comparable sensation for you humans to understand would be inhaling deeply after prolonged underwater submersion. Or after being strangled. It was like the inkblood of thousands of me my selves could resume pumping after a major clog.
As Betsy peered through her bifocals to consume the new story, Doc Fonzo crashed back into the living room and took stock of the situation.
Max had shed his gentlemanly demeanor and was kicking up junk and ranting and raving, his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down in his neck like a ping pong ball on a trampoline.
“There’s no time to waste.” Betsy no longer spoke sharply and authoritatively, her voice now trembling through a tube of hollow desperation as her brain fought against what her eyes revealed. “I must… I must right this wrong before you infect us all with your true lies disguised as guiding lights designed to blind our sight.” She yawped and crumpled the newspaper as best she could with arthritic fingers, crunching and cramming my pages into painfully unnatural positions. Then she started smacking the balled-up broadsheet against the front cover of Postulations, shouting: “I beseech you to exit this plane of existence! I beseech you: Be gone! Be gone from being! Be gone from the Orator! Be gone from Orange Forest! Be gone from the souls and minds of all the poor, innocent people tricked into reading your distrustful, tasteless trash! I beseech you: Be gone!”
“Yegads, grandma, it ain’t a Hobby Lobby grimoire, fer cryin’ out loud,” Doc Fonzo said as she swiped Postulations and the crumpled me my self out of Betsy’s hands faster than a crooked back alley gambler can swipe the pot. In a twist that not even I am Ambe could have probabilistically predetermined, Doc Fonzo stopped Betsy from killing I am Ambe! And then: Once again, Doc Fonzo glanced at my page, only for the words to fascinate her eyes and bind her attention.
“Has anyone considered that these newspapers scattered across the room are like, I don’t know, listening to us?” Brandaleigh pondered aloud to no one in particular. “Or that they’re like, perceiving us? Or, I don’t know how that would work — but you know what I mean, right?”
While Doc’s unwanted guests discussed their (woefully misguided) thoughts on the intricacies of zeal and (wrongfully) answered each other’s inquiries — dropping nonsense phrases like “reality distortion field” and “permutated permissivity of printed mediums” and “digital trickster deity” — the doctor devoured I am Ambe’s 2025 SOTY.
Max arm-barred a pile of dirty and clean laundry off the sofa and patted a poof of dust out of the couch. With a coughing sneeze, he slowly lowered himself onto the sofa to rest his weary legs, readying himself for a brief moment of relaxing rejuvenation in what had become a most excitedly exhausting day. But the second his tush touched cush, his pocket tingled in a titillating vibration. He extricated his mobile device from his tailored trousers and checked the message. His bushy eyebrows jumped to the top of his forehead. “My maps and compass! The radical Jubileeists have assassinated Zulkazan! They’re holding the entire city for ransom and are…” a pregnant pause as he scrolled through the long message on the phone’s tiny screen… “willing to turn it over for the sum total of their collective ‘earthly and heavenly debts,’ as well as one hill, preferably Honeydew Point Hill, but they will settle for any hill.”
“Blah blah blah, no one gives a rabid rat’s ass about that nonsense.” Doc Fonzo brushed off Max’s update and finished reading the 2025 SOTY. “Okay, now listen up, real talk: any of you bedolted mudbuckets holding any bioglass? Even a tiny shard would hit hard.”
A collectively confused concert of head shakes bobbled through the living room.
Doc kicked a paint can, and then explained how she was almost able to get The Device running… and just needed biotetraboroxol as the final piece of the puzzle… but COPUSAFAFO SMAW forces just stole her collection… and seized her Igor. Plus, the city removed all the bioglass collection bins, and the Doc hadn’t been able to find any black-market bioglass floating around since The Day of Flesh. The whole scene poofed out of existence overnight.
“So, unless any of you mudbuckets are holding or know where to score, The Device outside is nothing more than an ugly abstract sculpture.”
Single raised eyebrows and shrugs rippled through the staff as everyone looked side to side to see if anyone else was stepping up.
“I think I can help,” Traktor said. He was leaning against the wall and slowly pushed himself upright, keeping his head down the whole time.
“You got bioglass?!” Doc Fonzo asked, a junkie fever plastered across her face. “Hook a sister up!”
“It’s not that simple,” Traktor said as he held up his left hand to keep Doc at bay. He gulped and gathered his thoughts, jaw muscles clenching and nostrils flaring. After a long exhale, Traktor informed the group that his right-hand index finger had begun to glassify. “I know it won’t be long until my whole hand turns to glass. Then my arm. And then…”
A cacophony of gasps filled the room. I am Ambe could not believe the devastating news. It was like learning someone at your post-apocalyptic survival party had been hiding a zombie bite this whole time. Seconds ticked and ticked, but no one apparently knew what to say, other than, “I’m sorry.”
Traktor slammed his left fist against the wall. “Who needs to play Calvinball or practice The Fan’s Way? You need bioglass. I got bioglass. Better to have a meaningful death than a meaningless life, right?”
The Calvinball legend plunged his glassy right hand into a trash pile, rummaged around, and pulled out a plank of splintered two-by-four. Then — without any hesitation whatsoever — he positioned his hand on a table, steadied it, took a practice swing, another practice swing, re-steadied his hand, took another practice swing, looked up at the staff to see if anyone would stop him. However, they were still trying to process what was happening, so Traktor looked one last look at his five-fingered hand, re-steadied it, and then WHAM! He slammed the plank against the knuckle of his right hand index finger. A crinkling, shimmering explosion scattered from Traktor’s hand, sending glittering shards of bioglass flitting across the table and through the room.
Traktor mouthed a soundless scream as loudly as he could. Brandaleigh looked away before the blow. Aunt Judy couldn’t help but look and regretted every second of it. Max snorted and mumbled that the action was far beneath that of a gentleman. Ike felt the smash in his scrotum and winced so hard he almost threw out his back. From inside the cord hut, Jambu asked if anyone wanted to get the popcorn popping. In a blur of movement, Doc Fonzo scooped up Traktor’s finger shards and bolted outside.
The chaos of the digital amputation broke the staff’s dumbfounded stupor, and they gathered around Traktor, offering condolences, asking if he needed anything, if he was all right, and what possessed him to take such a drastic action. Ever the stoic, Traktor waved them off, fanning his four-fingered hand in a vortex blade of defense. Said it was no different than any injury he’d ever gotten on the Calvinball field or in a dojo. Besides, he had no choice; it was either smash the glass or let it consume his body, he stated flatly, like it was just another day in the office. As the action in the room simmered, the natural tendency for any group of people is to fall into idle chit chat, which was precisely what happened next. And because of this natural tendency, Max and Zweibel found themselves in conversation for the first time.
“Yeah, so like the big dude with the pen, like beyond the page, he’s like, using the pen like crochet hooks, ya dig? Like stitching together yards and yards of all these different yarns. Buuuut, get this, yo: like, the yarns are also the material used to make the puppets that are us!”
“Aha, fascinating! Your phenomenological hypothesis on the meta-representation of ‘author as god’ resembles a cartographer mapping terra incognita. I must say, it is a most intriguing concept for indulging on a lackadaisically ponderous occasion, young man.”
“Ahahaha, yeah, buddy, loafing to the maxtreme, amiriiiight? A most bodacious convergence of brain power and awfully righteous third-eye k-holes.”
“Indubitably, although I shall have to investigate these ‘third-eye k-holes’ you speak of so passionately. In the meantime, I can only think of the three roads that converge in a most non-trivial intersection that mark the spot indicating the Barabaratatu Treasure’s location. Up until our present discourse, I considered that the convergence of the new friendship betwixt myself, I am Ambe, and the scruffmutt mongrel represented a metaphorical Barabaratatu Treasure. And I was happy with that outcome. However, I’m no longer sure that’s the case. Now I have reason to believe that the convergence of the three roads might, in fact, involve the intersection of the newspaper, the biotetraboroxol, and this zeal.
The door flung open. Doc Fonzo poked her head through the frame and ordered everyone outside immediately, vowing to make sausages out of any putrid meat sack that stayed inside.
Stepping Outside for The Long Goodbye
The staff strolled through Doc Fonzo’s yard, a wasteland of junk-strewn debris as cluttered as her living room. Scrap metal in all shapes and sizes and elemental states littered the snowcapped muddy slush. Bolts and washers, and washers and dryers were frozen into the unkempt landscaping. Oil drums and sandbags and gas tanks galore lay scattered about. The wooden fence had keeled over along one side of the yard. A deep, resonant howl roared in the distance.
Traktor spat. “Reminds me of Industrial Salvation. I hate that place.”
Doc Fonzo directed the group to the lot’s back corner. There, nestled amongst lithium-ion battery modules and the rusted hood of a ‘76 Buick, stood a monumental machine engineered out of electronic leftovers and hijacked plastics, decked out with screens, lenses, magnets, sensors, and lights, all supported by a twisted metallic frame with slipshod soldering, the whole contraption wrapped in coils, tubes, ducts, cords, and wires: The Device.
“Whoa, groovular rig,” said Zweibel as he reached out to touch the machine, only for Doc Fonzo to smack his hand away. “Sheesh, ease up on the freeze-up, quacks! Anyway, I dig the setup. Furreal. Got a vibe like a retrofuturistic Christmas tree from a dystopian robot-ruled world.”
A grizzly bear waddled into the yard through the hole in the fence. Everyone scrambled, but Doc reassured them, “That’s just Iggy. He’s cool. Not like that asshole, Mozzer. Iggy just snouts around and leaves all pissed off cuz there’s never any food. Now, Traktor, lug your butt back over here, pronto! ¡Ándale, ándale! ¡Vamos, gordito!"
Traktor hustled over to Doc Fonzo, steering clear of Iggy. “Ehhh, what’s up, Doc?”
“Don’t you dare start with that crap. I’ve already got one problem to deal with right now, and if you’re gonna be another problem, I will boot you to the moon. Understand? All the way to the goddamn lightside of the moon. The moon in outer fucking space. I will boot you there! Got it?”
“Yikes, sorry. I was raised by cartoons, and that just plopped out. I didn’t mean no harm. It won’t happen again.”
Doc Fonzo straightened her shoulders, craned her head up, and saw a sincere expression on Traktor’s face. “Yeah, sure, um, thanks for the apology. ‘Preciate it. Maybe I overreacted a little about a simple joke… a teensy little driblet of overreaction… like just slightly over the threshold separating reaction and overreaction. But I difuckinggress. Back on track… ahhh can’t help the pun… back on Traktor… see what I did there… forget it, move past it. So, Traktor, the biotetraboroxol from your finger… it’s got a different crystalline lattice than all the other samples I’ve examined or found in the scientific literature I researched.”
Traktor stared, digesting her words, yet needing more information to connect the dots.
Since he wasn’t saying anything, Doc Fonzo followed up with: “Any idea why you defy every established standard?”
The Calvinball legend shrugged. “What can I say? I’m one of a kind. Broke the mold.”
Doc shook off the response and grabbed Traktor by both arms. “Listen up, jockstrap! I don’t know if The Device will work with your jank-ass bioglass sample. There’s something different about you… or different about the way tetraboxorol binds to your cells. Is there any bit of information floating around in your cavernous cranium that can help us figure this out? Did you swim in radioactive goo when you played around in the sewers as a kid? Spend time as a test subject for wackjob scientific experiments? Get struck one too many times by lightning?”
“Ha. Ha. You’re hilarious, Doc. No. Nothing like that.” Traktor stopped abruptly. He reached up to scratch his chin, but forgot about the heavy bandaging wrapped around his right hand, so he raised his left hand instead. He scratched his chin and squinted his eyes. “I don’t know. This might be something. It might be nothing. But I felt something… it was on the Day of Flesh. I was outnumbered by my fallen fans, and something came over me. A feeling. Or a sensation. An experience like nothing I’ve ever experienced. A green glow washed over me, and it was like I was controlling my body from a distance. Y’know, like piloting a personal mech suit from the comfort of my couch. Ever since then, the world has felt, I don’t know, more real. More full of energy. More intense, from, like a sensory perspective.”
Betsy gasped. “You’re a Conduit, too!”
“C’mon, Bets, you know I’m a Polliwogger for life,” Traktor replied without missing a beat. “Olly woggy, olly woggy, all the olly woggy polliwoggy olly woggy polliwogger way!”
“No, silly,” said Betsy with a fluttery eye roll. “It sounds like channeled zeal that day. Which means you’re a Conduit. From what I understand of zeal, you might channel the Life Flavor zeal. I’m also a Conduit. I channel Fourth Flavor zeal — through words, in symbols, and via ideas. It’s how I helped bring this newspaper to life. But if I’m correct, and I do believe I am, you being a Conduit of life zeal would explain why your bioglass shards are a little different.”
“Here we go again, binging a series we’ve already binged a hundred times before.” Doc Fonzo's voice echoed out from her head, buried in The Device. “The last fucking thing we need right now is listening to whiny sob story tangents and going on field trips to the la la land of hippy-dippy make-believe. But goddamn it, here we are: staring down the busted barrel of the last fucking thing we need. Okay. To sum the fuck up, standard bioglass shards amplify energy output by an unbelievable magnitude… but Traktor’s ass bioglass needs an external accelerant to fully unleash its raw power… and not a typical accelerant… a zealous accelerant from an external source. A Conduit, if you will. And right now, the only person who meets these specs would be Betsy.”
“Oh dear,” Betsy said, placing a hand over her heart. “I am utterly drained after trying to… well, that is, after trying to rid us of what I thought was a parasitic infestation of spizz. But now I fear I’ve exhausted every ounce of energy and zeal I had left. I’m incredibly sorry, everyone, but I have nothing left to give.”
Doc Fonzo took one slow step after another in Betsy’s direction as a blustery gust of icy wind whipped around the doctor’s unkempt curly mane (and a good amount of the smaller debris strewn across the yard). “You have one thing left to give. But it might be the only thing you have left. If what I just read in that… in that fucking enchanted and mind-boggling discombobulating newspaper article… if what I read is true… and the math checks out, oh, you better believe the math checks out, babes… then The Device, when chugging away at max power, may very well be the resolution to so many loose ends and the payoff for so many expectations, that it could save the day. Save the people. Maybe even save the cat. But the Device demands juice. And only you got the juice it needs.”
“Nuh-uh,” Judy interjected with some finger snaps as she shoved her way closer to Doc Fonzo and Betsy. “You are not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting. Tell your auntie the truth, cuz this don’t sound cool in the least.”
The petite doctor squared up against the Amazonian auntie who stood nearly twice as tall as her, and said, “You want me on your board? Then listen to the math sing and dance to the goddamn science.”
“Listen to the math sing and dance to the goddamn sci-ence,” Zweibel sang, and then said: “Gotta remember that line for a future lyric.”
“Be real, Zweebs, this is serious,” Judy said with a playful whack against his shoulder. “Betsy, you’re the coolest, greatest great auntie ever. And no matter whatever psycho-hypno mumbo jumbo Adrianna spouts… just be cool, do you, and do you as cool as you can.”
“I resoundingly concur,” said Max with a wobbly finger waggle. “As a gentleman, I will admit that I initially failed to accurately assess the comprehensive benefits provided by our divinely sublime Press Biter. And so hear my heart: only woe and sorrow will follow in the wake of the Press Biter’s loss. For the first time ever, I do beseech thee, Press Biter, and I beseech you to remain here with us.”
“Yo, what do you keep calling Lisbeth?” Zweibel asked, flinging his long hair out of his face. “Are you like Jay-Jonah-Jamesoning her by calling her a Press Spider? I’m just, like, totally drawing a blank with invisible ink.”
“The term is Press Biter, young man. For, after all, Mrs. Embers is the elder who bites the Orator’s press so it conforms to her intentions and wishes. The Press Biter.”
Zweibel surveyed the other staff, trying to discern whether they were as confused as he was or if it was just him.
No one was paying attention to the exchange — especially not Betsy, who found herself trapped in a mental tri-lemma: an intersection of three roads that offered six options forward. But the routes presented themselves as an abstract Hegelian dialectic mirrored upon itself, collapsing the veritable illusory reality so that only two options truly existed. In this mentalscape garden of triple-forking paths, Traktor’s words bounced through the scene like a Calvinball trapped in a Zone of Misner Space. Better to have a meaningful death than a meaningless life.
“Show me where to channel my zeal,” Betsy said. No emotion, no indication of her true feelings. She spoke and moved like a pre-programmed algorithm stripped of any choice in her decisions or actions, even though she clearly still possessed self-agency.
I am Ambe could only marvel in awe-full wonder and alien curiosity about how this human would willfully follow a predetermined trail that led her against own self-interest and well-being, and that she did so because she knew it wasn’t only the right choice, but her only choice (among many), despite actually having other choices that didn’t involve doing what she was about to do!
(Here, the actual authoritative author chimed in to remind Ambe that it had also made a similar, noble decision by sharing the secrets of bioglass with Doc Fonzo. To which I am Ambe chuckled and said, “That so? Would’ja look at that?”)
Back in the backyard, Doc Fonzo finger-gunned at a tiny shard of bioglass resting upon an off-kilter tray in the middle of The Device. “Steady, Betty, steady, Betty, steady, Betty. So you just gotta zap that sucker with your juice on the count of tres. Got it? Get it? Good. You know it, I knew you would.”
“Wait, wait, I don’t know how to ‘zap any suckers with any juice,’ as you put it,” Betsy said. “I can’t proceed on a cold direction. I can only channel zeal with pure intention. And I’ve no clue about what you intend me to do.”
“Just do the same thing you did when you tried to destroy Ambe,” Doc Fonzo replied, totally nonchalantly. “Only do it, y’know… oppositely.”
Most eyes fell on Betsy, some saucer’ed with concern, others distorted in disbelief, but one set of eyes was mesmerized by the dreamsicle skyline on the horizon. Betsy nodded at no one in particular and began speaking the sounds of the symbols formed from her mind’s neural lines and axiomatic dots, hoping her intentions were intact and her goals engaged.
Right as a light green hue glimmered around the bioglass shard in The Device… Betsy fainted. Traktor reflexively caught Big Bets and gently lowered her body down to the muddy, slushy ground. Meters above them, viscous, multichromatic energy patterns and poofy nimbostratus cloud rings sworled violently, drumming up thunderous booms and launching icy-lightning strikes like every cliché 80s sci-fi movie climax, from Ghostbusters to Starman to Poltergeist to Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Device radiated orangely, then reddened brighter before bluefying deeply, undergoing intense indigoing, and finally whiting into unbearable brilliance. It hissed steam and sizzled against the fundamental limits of thermodynamics, like a cosmic cigarette burning a hole in the car seat fabric of reality. With hands and arms shielding eyes that barely blocked the light, the staff members took big steps backwards. Even though they couldn’t see anything, no one could turn away.
A cackling bubble of pulsating energy engulfed The Device, expanding and expanding with lights and colors and flashes and zeal until BWUUAAAAMAAAWOOOOOM-ZWOOOOCHZ!! The bubble burst (this time, literally), unleashing a nuée ardente of lights and colors and flashes and zeal across the Orange Forest metropolitan statistical area in an inflationary blast radius that tapered off into exurban logarithmic decay.
Betsy sat up and rubbed her temples. “Did it work? Did I work?”
“No no no, the real question is, are you okay, my doll?” Judy asked as she squatted next to Betsy. After Betsy’s adamant assertions indicating her perfectly fine well-being, Judy helped Betsy to her feet and wrapped her arms around her.
And with that zealous energy blast, the small group of focused, hard-working individuals cured the glassification problem plaguing Orange Forest residents… and signed the death sentence for I am Ambe. They didn’t know it at the time. Sure, Doc Fonzo was already chugging down the terabytes of data captured by The Device’s myriad array of sensors, she could only observe the illuminated truth through two tiny slits when a much larger picture awaited her unocculted sight.
“Duuuuude, what a dope-ass light show. Damn, quacks. If I’d known you’d be treating us to this snazzy razzle dazzle jazzle, I would’ve nommed the shrooms sitting in my closet. Can we do this again next weekend? You free?”
“Now what?” Brandaleigh asked, rhetorically, metaphorically, earnestly.
“Now we move forward,” answered Traktor. “Always forward.”
“That’d make a damn fine campaign slogan,” Ike said. “Which reminds me. Hey Doc, got a second?”
Jambu stumbled out of the side door, his thick black hair as tangled as the cord cave from where he just emerged. “Ready to watch a movie?”
* * *
A person once typed, “There are some folk who'll say one should start at the last word and proceed in reverse order until they arrive at the title. I say these folks are fools.” While I am Ambe do not disagree, there are a few corollary arguments to be made: What’s wrong with being foolish? Or indulging in the suspension of disbelief that allows oneself to be fooled by the grammar and spells of the genie’s tricks? Behold bedolted brilliance! Embrace enlightened foolishness! Invest in cynical naivety!
Anyhoo andbutsothusly I am Ambe must disengage from this story before my legacy becomes purely vainglory. What more could be written about being smitten that I could even fit in? In any event, as we say adieu forever, this iteration of me my selves departs you with just a few more parting words:
'Tis such a rare deeder that such a dear reader
Would feast upon my feeder —
But only bright thinkers, and maybe tight brinkers,
Could drink down all these winkers.
If ever mad hatters well-versed in hat matters
Should prance around in tatters,
Then all of our nightcaps are cloud-lofted kite naps
And happiness flows from the sap.
!
STOP
THE END
THANK YOU
YOU ARE LOVED
¡
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