Science!
an excerpt

Penelope fell asleep into a new dream. Instead of a duck, she was a musician. More specifically, she was a piccoloist. A player of the piccolo. She was on stage in front of a huge crowd of well to do people, in a grand symphony hall. There was a symphony in the pit before her, but she was hte only one on stage. She was clearly the star of this show.

The conductor in the pit looked expectantly at her. She was apparently also leading this whole thing. Penelope noticed that the conductor looked very much like Herbert. Looking around the audience, she saw that they were all clones of Aiden. Then, on a hunch, she examined the orcheestra in the pit. They were all clones of Dr Glaser.

Penelope felt very strange and out of place.

She took a deep breath and brought the piccolo to her lips. She knew that she knew how to play the piccolo, but suddenly the idea of playing in front of these people- Herbert, Aiden, and Dr Glaser- made her feel small and incompetent. She began to play.

It was AWFUL.

The caterwauling reverberating through the whole hall, just like the hall had been designed to allow, but the caterwauling piccolo clashed with itself and made the tousands of Aidens in the audience cringe. The Dr Glasers in the pit glowered at Penelope, as if to ask how she dared to ruin their performace like so. Herbert the Conductor just looked at her sadly.

But somehow she could not stop playing the piccolo. It's awful sound filled the performance hall for what seemed like hours. Penelope kept trying to stop the music, but could not stop her lungs and fingers from producing it. The Aidens in the audience covered their ears and yelled at her. The Dr Glasers in the pit whispered to each other while looking pointedly at Penelope. All the while, though, Penelope watched Herbert. He gazed mournfully at her, then dropped his conductor's baton sadly by his feet, and just walked away. He walked to Penelope's left, out of the light, until she could no long see him.

Penelope felt something inside her break, and she finally wrenched the piccolo from in front of her mouth and threw it down. It rolled across the stage, slowing to stop in front of a gigantic koala bear standing at the right edge of the stage. Penelope could have sworn that it hadn't been there before. The koala was easily as tall as Penelope, if not slightly taller.

He (somehow Penelope knew that the koala was a male) looked down at the piccolo in front of his feet. He bent over slowly, very much like an old, fat man would, and picked up the piccolo awkwardly in his paws. He examined it for a minute, then looked at Penelope.

"You were the one playing this, am I correct?" He said.

Somehow, Penelope was not surprised that the koala could speak. "Yes, but I didn't want to."

The koala looked at her. "I could tell. You are a terrible piccolo player."

"I- I thought I could do it." Penelope said. It had been true, she had had the impression that she knew how to play the piccolo, efore she actually started.

"Have you ever actually played the piccolo before?" The koala asked. He was twirling the tiny instrument in his paw, and Penelope couldn't figure out how he was managing it.

"No, sir."

"Then what made you think you could do it?" He was doing some pretty fantastic piccolo acrobatics. Penelope had seen people doing similar things with pens in their hands, but had never been able to do them herself.

"I don't know. I felt like I had the knowledge in my head, but when I tried to play it wasn't there."

"That is because you have never actually played the piccolo before. You can have all the knowledge in the world on how to do something, but that doesn't mean you actually can do it." He looked at the piccolo. Suddenly it was a dropper, just like she used at work to apply Lissitsky's Serum to swatches, only made of green glass or crystal. "Do you know my name?"

"No, sir. I have never met you before."

"My name is Chris Baty. Remember it."

With those words, the koala threw the little glass or crystal dropper into the pit of Dr Glasers. It exploded violently, and the Dr Glasers started screaming and trying to get out of the pit. Several them had cuts from the exploding glass or crystal. While they were panicking and trying to escape the dropper, which was now in the center of the pit somehow exuding a poisonous looking green gas, the koala leapt over the pit into the audience of Aidens. With a roar the koala called Chris Baty began devouring Aidens. Somehow he swallowed them whole, never to be seen again, but never got any bigger. The ones in the front row were devoured quickly, and the ones in the rows farther back quickly jammed the doors preventing any escape. Penelope watched in horror as the malevolent marsupial devoured Aidens.

Suddenly from the left appeared Herbert. He weilded a big stick, and ran after the koala, waving it about like a weapon. Just as Herbert got to the evil koala, it turned and grabbed the stick right out of his hands. Chris Baty the Malevolent Marsupial then used the sick as a bat, knocking Herbert through a nearby wall, before continuing his rampage.

Penelope woke up cursing Chris Baty's name.