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Alan washed down the taste of his 5th donette with a hearty swig of Brita-filtered water. Then he began to write on his special pad, the one that warmed him like no other pad of paper before. "Oh my pad, my pad!" he expostulated, and fell onto his back, hugging it fiercely. The SS cronies edged up and tried to disentangle it from him, along with his lacy bonnet and milk pail, but Alan managed to roll to the bottom of the tulip-strewn hill.
They chased him merrily through the lily strewn ravine, exhorting him to drop them even a biscuit or handkerchief as laughter echoed off the rock walls. Now, you may not think of SS cronies as the sort to do anything merrily, and you'd be right, but these were not the cream of the crop SS personnel. These were the ones who had failed The Tests three times, and were relegated to the unimportant missions. In short, they had failed to become SS Thugs. Fortunately, the SS, short for Psychic Sickos of America, weren't that picky. Now they had found a happy man, if only happy over a pad, and they wanted to be happy, too. They pursued him like ducklings after their mother, and Alan set new records bounding ahead of them. He began to spread the membranes under his arms, bellying up to the wind. A furtive whisper to his shoulder pad alerted the corps. "Goldilocks to Papa Bear, the porridge is just right." And miles away, hundreds of unthinking electric relays sprung into action. It was a trap, and the fallen SS were neatly caught by their own petards. Caught, mind you, but not hoisted. Only a barbarian would actually hoist someone by their petard, and no one wants to be thought a barbarian. I mean, do you? I sure don't. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, petards. These were no ordinary petards. They were the latest in high tech bionic petards, custom designed to fit 2 pads of paper snugly in a secret compartment that only your SS superior knows the combination of. Alan, of course, kept decoy pads in his petard, so he wasn't worried. His beloved pad was safe. Where? Even I may not reveal the location for Alan is sitting across from me and I dare not incur his wrath.
