One: Watch Your Entropys and Queues

One morning, hubris ceased to be an abstract and became tangible. As a result, all the print and television journalists choked to death, leaving the bloggers to report the news. But the bloggers were really, really stupid and couldn't spell so nobody learned anything new from them.

Folk tales made a big comeback. There was the one about the guy who was tired from having gone to a movie the night before and the one about the dwarf construction worker who had pencils tied to his hard hat. No one believed the stories; in fact, people didn't believe much of anything, including things they could hear with their own eyes and see with their own noses. *

Conservatives decided conservatism was idiotic and became satanists. Liberals decided liberalism was moronic and became doughnuts. Moderates decided to stay moderate, but added random violent crime to their value system and began pillaging cities. Well, city. They seemed fixated on Tulsa and looted it over and over and over. No one knew why and they wouldn't have believed the reason even if they had known.

The great religions of the world did not abandon faith altogether, but every organized church or synagogue or mosque or temple simultaneously and coincidentally began referring to its holy deity as "Dude." This rendered matters very confusing for prospective converts, most of whom did not believe Dude's new moniker was the result of happenstance.

One day a young woman named Nichelle Trudery vowed to restore order to the world. No one believed she could do this, including her best friend, Elmer Treedweller.

"You can't do it," Elmer told her.

"You're such a naysayer. I can restore order. I know it's a tall order, but I can order the..." her voice trailed off.

Nichelle had brilliant green eyes, which some recalcitrant people called "brown", and a big nose, so no one doubted her vision, but she tended to speak in a very repetitive manner and this proved a real drawback because her voice lacked any sort of incantatory quality to indicate the repetition was deliberate.

"I can do it," she insisted to Elmer, a short thin man whose life appeared to have given him literal, rather than figurative, lemons, which accounted for his facial expression. "I might even bring back the Demonocrats and the Repulsivecans, just for a little extra normality."

Elmer nodded, admiring the fact that Nichelle seemed to know "normalcy" was just a word Warren G. Harding made up. He would help her if she asked. He had to. But he still didn't think she could do it and was not sure he wanted order to return anyway.

Dude help us all if she succeeds, he thought.

Next Installment: Episode Eye Eye (Or Nose Nose, to some)

*The general mood of incredulity became so rampant that many people decided the conventional wisdom about which organs controlled which senses must be wrong.