Literary Tales from the Mind of a Bird

     Then, in an unexpected twist, no unexpected twist occurred. Instead, anonymous001 went about his regular business, doing the things any normal Neopet does. Helping his owner price items in their shop. Battling the Chia Clown in the Battledome. Trying to bribe the Tombola Man into giving himself and his owner a winning ticket. (Note: bird_brain312 denies any involvement in attempting to bribe the Tombola Man.)

     A few years later, just when it appeared that there would be no unexpected twist in our story, it arrived. On this day, I noticed anonymous001’s happiness level had dropped from delighted! to joyful. Note the lack of an exclamation point after joyful. Clearly, this was one unhappy Neopet. However, being the lazy Neopian I am, instead of seeing what the trouble was, I let anonymous001 play with the cheapest plushie I could find, a Blue Ixi Plushie, until his happiness had gone back up to delighted! Thinking things were fine, I then went off to restock.

     I finally realized something was wrong when anonymous001 said to me, “Something’s wrong.” At the time, I was in the Spooky Food Shop, haggling on a Vanilla Ice Cream Apple Lantern. I ended up just missing this item, but at least I had someone to blame this tragic event on.

     “This is all your fault, anonymous,” I yelled. “What is your problem?”

     “The problem, my friend, is that I read ‘Radio Active Pteri Part 1’ years ago, and Part 2 has never surfaced,” anonymous001 replied. “I don’t understand it.”

     Keeping in mind that our friendship is about as strong as Jhudora and Illusen’s, we decided to argue instead of discussing the matter together in a polite manner. So I told anonymous001 to figure it out himself, what with him being an ultimate genius and everything. Makes sense to me. It did not, however, to him.

     “I may be an ultimate genius,” he said, “but you haven’t read me ANY books in the past 2 years, except Waterlogged Book, A BOOK WHICH I GOT FROM FISHING IN A CAVE IN MARAQUA. How can you expect me to ‘figure it out myself’ when that’s the ONLY literary exposure I’ve had in A FEW YEARS?”

     I calmly shot back, “Way to overuse the caps lock, Sir Caps Lockington.” Let this serve as evidence that one should never try and exchange insults with me, as my razor wit is too sharp to handle.

     I had to admit, though, it was a puzzler. I decided I would have to take serious action to figure this out, and so later on at night, that is exactly what I did.

     That night, I pondered.

     Of course, I would not usually resort to such drastic measures, but this was a puzzle the likes of which I had never seen before. After some good, hard pondering, I managed to come up with some ideas, and I posed them to anonymous001.

     “Maybe,” said I, “it’s a TNT plot designed to make all the intelligent pets go crazy. They realize that at some point, all smart Neopets will read this book, and then when they find out there is no Part 2, they will go bonkers.” At the time, anonymous001 was a Lupe who was painted Christmas all year long, when we all know Christmas only comes once a year, so one would think he would already be close to the brink of insanity anyway.

     anonymous001 shot my theory down as soon as the words were out of my mouth, though. “I’m not crazy,” he said. “That shoots your theory down right there.”

     I rolled my eyes. “anonymous,” I stated, “crazy folks never admit they’re crazy. That’s what makes them crazy.”

     In turn, anonymous001 rolled HIS eyes! The nerve! After his shameful display of disrespect had ended, he asked me, “Okay, then. Are you crazy?”

     I responded, “I most certainly am not! ...oh. I see your point. Well, I’ve still got other theories!” With that, I moved on to idea number 2.

     My second theory was a lot less complex. “Perhaps the author meant his story to just be a one-parter.”

     Sarcastically, anonymous001 countered with, “Oh, that makes a lot of sense. That’s why the writer called the story ‘Radio Active Pteri PART ONE’.”

     I moved on to my third point. Couldn’t it be that the reason no Part 2 was released was because Part 1 didn’t sell many copies? This seemed quite reasonable to me.

     “So, with this theory,” said anonymous001, “you’ve chosen to ignore the fact that Radio Active Pteri Part 1 always sells out within a minute or two of appearing in the Book Shop.”

     I was starting to get mad now! “Listen, you could be helping, anonymous001, instead of just saying that all my ideas are wrong.”

     Oh, but he had an answer there, too. “I believe how I’m helping is by proving all your theories to be false. Otherwise, you could make yourself look foolish if you chose to broadcast these thoughts to others.” Like I’d be that silly! It’s not as though I’m some birdbrain who would make all my musings available to all of Neopia!

     Quite furious at this point, I decided to use my last idea. “Possibly,” I theorized wisely, “the reason ‘Radio Active Pteri Part 2’ hasn’t been released is because you smell!” Aha! Obviously anonymous001 should have learned that one can never defeat me in a war of words.

     It was now getting to be quite late, so anonymous001 and I put our debate on hold to go to sleep. However, we did not have a good rest. I knew it was because we were both trying to figure out why ‘Radio Active Pteri Part 2’ was never published. Others have argued that the reason we didn’t sleep well is because our Neohome is just an undeveloped lot, but to that line of thinking, I say pshaw. PSHAW! Pardon my language.

     After that fateful night, the topic of ‘Radio Active Pteri Part 2’ was never discussed again. It always lurked in the back of my mind, however, and with anonymous001 being zapped into a Pteri by the Secret Laboratory Ray recently, all the previous emotions I had came rushing back to me. Of course, he could be a blue Kyrii tomorrow or a spotted Mynci a week from now, but for the time he is a Pteri, and this makes me again wonder why ‘Radio Active Pteri Part 2’ is about as real as Jelly World. For the record, my personal theory about Jelly World is that it is just another device developed by TNT to make all of us go mad as we try and figure out why one always hears about a place that obviously does NOT exist.

     Meanwhile, I shall continue to hope that ‘Radio Active Pteri Part 2’ will be released, and if it ever is, I will buy a copy and read it to anonymous001 to satisfy him. Maybe. One thing that is for certain, though, is that I will take all the credit for this book being published if it ever makes its way into the Book Shop.

The End