Announcer: -but it seems to be a spitball, as it takes a strange curve. Now
Sprunk is madly scrambling for the ball! It looks like it just barely
grazed Tedzilliger's bat, then bounced off it-it's ruled a fiy ball. The
umpire is signaling that the formidable Sprunk has caught it for
Out-of-Town, to end the seventh inning. It's a bad break for Home
Team. That's how the last play would have looked, football fans, if this
had been a game of baseball.
Sloth: Bah! You might as well transport this game to the Moon.
Crab: No sooner said than done! Just a twiddle here, a twiddle there ...
(On the screen there appears a desolate crater-pitted field, with two teams in
space suits facing each other, immoblle. All at once, the two teams fly into
motion, and the players are making great bounds into the air, sometimes
over the heads of other players. The ball is thrown into the air, and sails so
high that it almost disappears, and then slowly comes floating down into the
arms of one space-suited player, roughly a quarter-mile from where it was
released.)
Announcer: And there, friends, you have the subjunctive instant replay as
it would have happened on the Moon. We'll be right back after this
important commercial message from the friendly folks who brew
Glumpf Beer-my favorite kind of beer!
Sloth: If I weren't so lazy, I would take that broken TV back to the dealer
myself! But alas, it's my fate to be a lazy Sloth ... (Helps himself to a large
gob of French fries.)
Tortoise: That's a marvelous invention, Mr. Crab. May I suggest a
hypothetical?
Crab: Of course!
Tortoise: What would that last play have looked like if space were four-
dimensional?
Crab: Oh, that's a complicated one, Mr. T, but I believe I can code it into
the dials. Just a moment.
(He steps up, and,Jor the first time, appears to be using the full power of
the control panel if his Subjunc-TV, turning almost every knob two or
three times, and carefully checking various meters. Then he steps back with
a satisfied expression on his face.)
I think this should do it.
Announcer: And now let's watch the subjunctive instant replay.
638
(A confusing array of twisted pipes appears on the screen. It grows larger,
then smaller, and for a moment seems to do something akin to rotation.
Then it turns into a strange mushroom-shaped object, and back to a bunch
if pipes. As it metamorphoses from this into other biz.arre shapes, the
annnouncer gives his commmentary.)
Tedzilliger's fading back to pass. He spots Palindromi ten yards
outfield, and passes it to the right and outwards-it looks good! Palin-
dromi's at the 35-yard plane, the 40, and he's tackled on his ownContrafactus