PRINCETON HHH HASH #647.4 Date: February 22, 1998 Set by: Cuban Assassin/Wacko Hashers: 242, LRF, Rojo, Delay LLLama, Always Open, Speed Bumps, LFBB, IUTHW, Reluctant Breeder, Skaar Tissue, Clay Spencer, The Gerbils are Sick..., Bang Him Harder, Dave Williams, Omar Saleh, Lev Hofman, Drew Ronnenberg, Hey Yo! Paully, Pyroman, Pushnermaybe, Kin de Walt, John Favilla, Sandalman, Philly 1-4, a dog. Weather: Balmy Venue: Great Bear National Swamp Hard Corpse VI: In Search of Dr. Mangrove or Incidents of Travel in Central New Jersey, Chaos, and Yonder An excerpt from the audio diary of Mr. Danforth Waxton-Presswood, assistant to Prof. "Westchester" Jones, archeologist. [Waxton-Presswood has just met Jones at the train station, where they catch a local bus.] Waxton-Presswood: Dr. Jones! Dr. Jones! I came as soon as I could! I can't wait to begin this, your latest expedition, but your telegram was a bit thin on details! Where are we headed? Jones: It's a marvel! After months of wheeling and dealing, I've at last acquired the notebooks of Dr. T. W. Mangrove, who disappeared only last year. Rumor has it that he embarked on a fourth, secret expedition to the fabled lost city of the Raritan Tile People, but radio contact with his party ceased abruptly three days after his departure. W-P: The Raritan Tile People! I've never heard of them. Did they have mountaintop cities built of mammoth blocks of stone, inlaid with gold and silver, linked by highways cut through living rock, like the Incas? Jones: Not exactly... W-P: Perhaps they built giant pyramid temples dedicated to bloodthirsty gods, and conducted human sacrifices, ripping the still-pulsating hearts from victims culled from an endless supply of captives taken during their imperial conquests!? Jones: Please! It's almost lunchtime. W-P: Well? Jones: Well, actually they specialized in bathrooms. You see, just as Los Angeles was known as the "Valley of Smokes" long before the advent of the white man's industry and automobiles, New Jersey was a naturally decaying cesspool of swamps long before the invention of man-made toxic waste. W-P: Incredible! Jones: The Raritan Tile People apparently gravitated to the swamps of what we now know as "Central New Jersey" after being cast out of all the more desirable locales in North America. W-P: But why? Jones: It was their disgusting habits. You see, the Tile People, whose traditional diet promoted flatulence and loose bowels, constructed giant defecatoriums in the centers of their cities, and it now appears that they spent most of their time in these edifices, which were invariably overlaid with colorful ceramic tile, hence the name of the builders. Indeed, the entire social life of the Tile People revolved about the "House of Shit" in each city. Even today this name appears -- albeit slightly corrupted -- among the institutions of Central New Jersey. W-P: Astounding! [The bus rolls to a stop.] Jones: Here at last! W-P: But...this is Mercer County Central Park! Jones: Goodness no! That's Mercer NATIONAL PARK! Once it had been established that toxic pools, floating debris, and mutated vegetation is the natural state of New Jersey, this area was immediately reclassified as a pristine wilderness area, and last year Congress voted to make it the latest national park -- the jewel of the Northeast Corridor! You can't believe how much I had to pay to get the digging permits here -- but at least I got to stay in the Lincoln bedroom. W-P: It looks forbidding! And we've got a lot of equipment. How are we going to transport it through this wasteland...sorry, pristine wilderness? Jones: I've arranged for a party of 20 porters, and, of course, a couple of native American guides. W-P: That's quite a crew. I hate to think what it cost! Jones: Not to worry! I'm using the traditional method for dealing with savages; I've promised them alcoholic beverages! But mind you -- don't hand out any of the booze before we get to the interior; they're perfect fiends when intoxicated. Ah! But here come the guides! The woman is Rojo, self-styled Queen of the Amazons, and the creature next to her is little Tufatu, her rouster and enforcer. Be quiet now and let me do the talking. [Two savages in brightly colored, if tattered, costumes approach.] Jones: Greetings, Ultimate Rojo! I see that you've brought your usual crew of criminals, derelicts, drunkards, and addicts shanghaied from the academic and industrial research laboratories on Route 1. Rojo: Yes! Big travel! Many boxes! Rojo bring many workers! Some from far Philly! Need lotsa fire water!! Jones: Yes, of course... Tufatu! Keep your hands out of there! Supreme Rojo, we'd better head out while we still have a few hours of daylight left. I wouldn't want to be caught in Great Bear National Swamp after dark! Rojo: We go now! You start! I bring workers! Follow soon! [The savages go to loosen the leg-irons on the porters. Jones and Waxton-Presswood head off into the brush.] W-P: Dr. Jones, I don't understand; if those are our native guides, why are we heading out first? Jones: Well, "guides" may be too strong a term. I'll be following the directions left by Dr. Mangrove in his notes. But I'm counting on the rabble to blunder off the trail in all directions, and in doing so to create a broad, moving distubance that will frighten off the lesser vermin, and perhaps provide a catch or two for the larger predators, which are much less aggressive when sated. The truth is, our native guides would be totally lost out here if I didn't keep dropping bits of flour behind us to mark our trail! The pack train will stay close enough that we can keep an eye on them. W-P: Gadzooks! Look over there! Jones: Oh, dammit! There goes Tufatu, leaping into the first stream he sees! I hope he hasn't damaged the mass spectrometer. W-P: He's calling for others to dive in! Jones: Tufatu is a notorious malingerer. Hopefully, most of the porters will ignore him and cross at the bridge on Quaker Road. That's where we're headed, and where Dr. Mangrove's account begins. I have it here; it's from page 397.4, only a week before an entry labeled "Hard Corpse I". [The following is reproduced from the notebook of T. W. Mangrove. Supremely arrogant, Dr. Mangrove always wrote of his own exploits in the third person.] "Venue: The Big Tree in the middle of Quakerbridge Road to due West through the Great Bear Swamp across the train tracks to Basin Road. "The Great Bear Swamp is thought to be impenetrable. Impassable. Exceedingly nasty. Not the terrain on would expect from the dignified T. W. Mangrove. But this Swamp Bears some sort of obsession for him. He attempted it in July and was met by a solid wall of grinning thorns. He tried again in October and surrendered after sinking up to his neck. But this time he would not be denied..." Jones: I wouldn't normally deal with Rojo and her reprobates, but she accompanied Dr. Mangrove on that third expedition, and was one of the few to return. And, of course, he DID find the lost city on that trip. Well, we're here... W-P: The Great Bear National Swamp! An endless expanse of quivering gelatinous muck, with gnarled and stunted trees straining futilely to reach the sun, but forever bound in the clutches of implacable, parasitic thorns! We'd better jump in before it gets dark! Jones: Wait just a bit, and let the pack train catch up. Better to feed a few of them to the bears first. W-P: They seem surprisingly gleeful, urging each other on and on! Jones: Few ever return from trips into the Swamp, so there's no one to tell them how bad it gets. Let's get going. [Somewhat later.] W-P: Dr. Jones! Look at this! The plants are red, but the water is green! Jones: Of course! As we approach the giant, leaking, waste repositories of the Tile People, the plants have mutated to absorb different wavelength light. Certainly you've noticed that the sun appears a different color under the reeking haze of methane and hydrogen sulfide?! W-P: But the green slime on the water?? Jones: Just a few fluorescent bacteria; they're probably not pathogenic to people with normal immune systems. Try not to get any of it in your cuts, however. Anything that lives here is unlikely to be fazed by mere antibiotics! [Still later.] Jones: I always get a kick from watching the porters! Such morons! Dodging trains (which would never dare to stop out here!), then scampering up a 45 degree concrete embankment, only to plunge into the swamp again, squeezing through breaks in a fence intended to keep them out of trouble! W-P: At last, out of the swamp. What a stench! How many porters did we lose? Jones: Who knows? I never take an exact count before setting out. That way, if the authorities ask if anyone was injured or lost, I can maintain plausible deniability. W-P: Look at that lovely, 5-foot high, green carpet of vegetation under those trees ahead! How delightful! Jones: Heaven forfend! That's the Baker's Basin National Thorn Arboretum! Not even Rojo's fanatical personal bodyguard -- Heyo, Pyro, and Pushna -- will enter there! But the lost city is rumored to be nearby. W-P: There! What is that white mound glistening in the sun!? Jones: Look, on the ground! Tiles! Can it be...?! [They dash toward the mound, just ahead of the screaming porters, who now begin to prostrate themselves before the heap, slashing their faces, palms, and chests with shards of tile, which lie all around.] Jones: This is it! Oh Tragedy! The Tile Defecatorium! Utterly demolished! What could have caused it? W-P: Dr. Jones! It's obvious! There's no smell! No reeking gases from below. After a thousand years of fermentation, a spark must have detonated the methane! Jones: No doubt it was Dr. Mangrove. He probably lit a celebratory cigar, and the resulting cataclysm buried him forever beneath a mountain of tile! What a loss to science! And the Tile People -- gone forever -- our cultural heritage forever diminished! Hand out the beer to the porters -- there's no reason to go on any further!