In every generation there is a zookeeper, born with an unnatural cunning and social circle native to no normal human. This is the story of such a being and his never-ending quest for a consistent plot. Once upon a time there was a Zoo keeper called Graham. He loved his job but one day he had to leave it because he discovered that his name was not Graham, and he couldn't remember who he was, thus he went back to the place where he had been deposited as a 6-month old baby: the back-door of an old Albanian restaurant. Which was actually a secret staging ground for deployment of genetically engineered brussel sprout eating fleas. Of course, the former-Graham being a former-Zookeeper correctly identified the fleas as being both brussel sprout eating and genetically engineered. But for what sinister purpose? This riddle was beyond his ability and frankly it was none of his business. So he called on a higher authority to investigate the history the old Albanian restaurant: when it was established, the technology it possessed that was capable of making genetically engineered brussel sprout eating fleas etc.

When the investigator got back to Graham, (at least that's what he thought his name was) he informed him of some shocking news. If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall and have a neck twice the length of a normal human's neck and yet a life-size Ken would still not be capable of procreation with her. This new development led the former Graham to form a hypothesis: the development of the Barbie and Ken dolls had all come about as a cover for the Albanian restaurant/genetic clinic more sinister plans.

Eventually, every Barbie and ken doll, which appealed to every child despite the monstrosities behind their real-life measurements, would actually serve as methods of deploying the fleas, which were being even further developed to devour more than just brussel sprouts. Graham felt gratified by the war on brussel spouts, that great heinous enemy of all things with taste, yet he also felt outraged at the misuse of innocent children's toys in such a blatantly retarded fashion, he decided to eat some brussel sprouts, so as to take the pressure off of the fleas.

Then Graham [whose real name was really awful, so he _changed_ it _to_ Graham] realized that the fleas were also genetically engineered to eat away at the children's brains so that when they grew up all they would have in their minds about their plans for their future would be to systematically destroy every living thing that wasn't a flea or a brussel sprout. When Graham learned this, he hurried back to the laboratory in the Zoo and faked a safety Inspection permit, he forced his way down through the shadowless marble hallways of the lower levels with only a torch and a number of security cameras watching him, the one thing on his mind now was to get to the basement and eat brussel sprouts. Something in the back of his mind to him that he should do something else, but all he could remember was how much of his life he had devoted to the careful study of Barbie and ken dolls and the psychological influence that they had on the children that played with them.

He pondered, as he walked, how amazingly clever and devious the whole thing was. But wait, what was that noise? He rounded a corner, and to his lasting horror (and also the lasting damage to his dentures) he ran smack into the hard crust of a morbidly engineered gargantuan flea. Some of his teeth imbedded themselves into the flea's spine, which understandably upset it muchly. It turned around angrily to see what insignificant being was the cause of such distress, and after a brief conversation over the weather, his philosophical inclinations and why he had just bitten him. The giant flee proposed they play a game of chess to decide however, because of this painful annoyance in his back he was not concentrating fully and thus not playing up to his usual accomplished level as this pain would just not go away.

Therefore he made the fatal mistake of king to rook 4 and thus graham quietly smiled to himself, all the while hoping to prove himself worthy of the title of chess grandmaster when he went back to school, to make something of his life as his mother always wanted. Nonetheless there was also the fact having won he could now press the giant flea for information regarding the nefarious genetically manipulated thingymabobs going on all around him, considering this, he did so. To his horror Graham found that the flea was not a genetically engineered flea but a normal flea.

Graham squished the flea and then sat looking at his feet. It had taken him three hours to destroy this elephantine insect under his boots and they were now, up to the very rim of his Wellington boots, covered in the thick paste-like insides of the flea. The full repugnance of what he had done only began to sink in when he saw a small tag next to the chessboard attached to a little leg, saying "sparky". Graham considered this, and decided whatever child kept such a pet was a waste of tax money anyway, he took off his boots and went on to his next adventure, which involved kicking the nearby vending machine until it gave him the right bag of crisps.

*After* this, he promptly cleaned his teeth, combed his hair stole some boots and went on, to his growing nausea he walked in on an embarrassed flea who was reliving himself of a full bladder on a miniature fire hydrant. After several minutes poor Graham mustered the remaining sanity he had left and realised that this was an embarrassing situation to be in, at which time he closed the door after telling the flea he was sorry. The flea told him to not be so embarrassed, after all that was quite natural. Graham walked on weakly, his mind reeling with all the new things he was discovering.

He then walked into an enormous room, stacked to the ceiling with boxes. He approached, and realized all the boxes were filled with nothing. This made Graham remember some vague image from his childhood, some void-filled picture that now perplexed his mind. Graham wanted to forget about horrible fleas and exegetically mutated brussel sprouts and psychotically murderous children. He wanted to find out more about this image so he planned to see a Shaman. To do this however, he had to find out exactly what it was a Shaman did and why on Earth he would bother to go and see one. So he decided to look it up in the dictionary at which time he found a word, which starts with "S", and completely confused the poor chap. The word was Serendipity. After several perplexed moments contemplating the connotations of this conundrum he put the dictionary down and left the building. But where to find a shaman at this hour? Mongolia, Tibet, the ice cream stand outside parliament?

There was only one place to try at 3 am on a Sunday morning, he logged onto the internet after spending 3 hours chatting to a Mongolian girl called Shamanis on webnet and discovering she had nothing to do with shamans but could open beer bottles with her belly button Graham decided it would be best to visit Aunt Gertrude, a tarot reader and Laundromat owner to see if she could help him when an ambulance came screaming round the corner, it's sirens wailing like tormented spirits of automobile heathend and ran over his foot. Yelling in agony Graham limped to the Laundromat, and whined to Aunt Gertrude who decided the only fair thing to do was hit him over the head very hard. When he awoke to Gertrude's withered countenance, Graham was horrified to realise that there was no spoon. After this development, Graham was further shocked when he learned that Auntie Gertrude was really Uncle Graham. Well, Graham was understandably dumfounded at this revelation. So he asked his uncle why they shared the same name (after he had asked why the ten bells he posed as a woman).

So Graham sat Graham down and began to explain the whole tale to the addlebrained young man (it turned out he never needed to go to Mongolia). No! For it turned out that the fleas were really a clever ruse to allow the cheesemaking philanthropist genetic scientists behind the scheme ample time to seek out a dark secret beneath a certain hill in jerusalem, if they got to this..all humanity would surely be enslaved. Graham pondered this new information, and decided the best course would be to ignore it and hope it went away, in the meantime he was desperately eager to know what uncle graham was an uncle and not an aunt, and if in fact his own name was graham, and if his last name was perhaps crackers.

So it was that the mystery was revealed. He was really really tired, so many revelations in one day were too much for a simple zoo-keeper who had been raised behind an old Albanian restaurant. Poor Graham, his soul was crushed by realizing how much trouble he had found out existed. So he decided oh, well, what the hell, he was really only a zookeeper, his only concern should be to keep the monkeys from throwing stolen cigars at the smokey bears. Seeing this, he left his uncle (who had begun his ritual of watching Jerry Springer every night) and decided to walk back to his zoo. But lo and behold! the minute he walked out the door, his eyes encountered a giant inflatable Alsatian hopping along the candy cane on a pogo stick! He immediately went to the optician, who told him that what he saw was in fact a giant inflatable *terrier* hopping along the candy cane on a pogo stick! And as the pogo stick came over his head, and began to fall our hero awoke. Then he realized his name was Ralph, only he pronounced it Raafe because he always wanted to be French.

Then he found himself inside the monkey cage cause the cute little chimps locked him in there until the morning. So, as the chimp's fleas [normal fleas] began to eat him he concocted a daring plan. Summoning all of his resourcefulness he kicked the nearest monkey through the bars, pulled it by the leg as close as might be and stole it's banana, using the banana to pick the lock was no easy feat..so he decided to beat the lock with the monkey's head until it opened. Liberated at last it was with a heavy heart that he breathed a deep sigh and turned around to find out that the thing breathing heavily (not to say smell-ily) down his neck was a raspy screech, which startled poor graham (who now called himself raaafe) into thinking the fleas were in cahoots with the dead monkey's brother.

Curiosity egged him on to find out what this was what he saw was that the dead brother's monkey was really Tom Selleck in disguise, doing research for his next film. So Raafe put down the shotgun and instead punched Tom Selleck in the library with the spanner. He stole his money and went to get himself lunch at the cafeteria, where he met his boss who told him the meaning of life. The man-normerly-known-as-graham wasn't very impressed by it and decided that life sucked. So he decided to make a new life, that was bigger and better than the old life.

He started work immediately on a massive film, chocolate and computer game binge but was soon forced to stop when he ran out of money, popcorn..and the ability to move his right eye. He decided new action was called for, he covered his left eye with a patch so that his right eye would be forced to work properly. A side-effect of this was that many people thought he was a pirate and women swooned in his presence because of his swashbuckling appearance exactly at this moment somewhere in the north of nowhereia a donkey brayed. The mongoose who was getting ready to pounce on the snake missed his mark and fell on a hidden alarm which triggered a hidden production line. The product, massive supradupramegafantastically gooey flea cakes, made the-man-who-was-formerly-graham (now raafe) feel a jolt in his brain (readers are requested to visualise the raafe's jolt as graphically as possible).

He decided to use his new found pirate charm and flea cakes to lure women to his toilet. There he would make them flush it because the-man-formerly-known-as-graham has a fear of flushing toilets because one overflowed on him when he was a child. He never speaks of it. After the woman has flushed the toilet for him he realised that he would have to give them the flea cake, but his love for them had grown so much that he couldn't do it. And so he ran away (while eating the cake). [It is at this time that people should also be aware that flea cakes are not actually made *of* fleas, they are made *by* fleas and as a result are very small.]

The Graham formerly known as artist thus came to an impasse his eye hurt, his head was splitting, he was addicted to junk food and flea-manufactured products and somewhere a dark plot was being hatched, he decided to put some clothes on and return to castle wolfenstein, once he had completed this addictive game, he would then see about saving the world and his supply of flea-cakes. However little did Graham know that even then he was being watched by his arch nemesis, the postman. As he left the house he was assailed by a vast tide of beauracry and credit card debts graham knew what he had to do. He tried to make an appointment with a prominent psychotherapist in order to give himself perspective on all the terrible disturbing **** occuring in his life and to help explain his periodic identity crises. Unfortunately for Graham, the prominent psychotherapist was booked solid dealing with an American teenager named Bobby who was raised up exclusively by students in high school health class.

Graham was of course not overjoyed by any of this and he so he calmed himself, drank a beer and decided he would have to go with his second option of going to Mongolia afterall to visit the mystical Shaman. However Graham then remembered, he was out of money, darn luck. To reverse this unfortunate revelation Graham decided to rob his arch nemesis the postman's establishment of employment, namely the post office. Graham ran back to the laboratory (accidentally-on-purpose kicking mr selleck in the head as he flew past), grabbed his shotgun and ran straight to the post office without formulating a wise and established plan of attack. Thus Graham, only being able to see well out of one eye, with a splitting head, ran through the glass door of the PO, tripped over an old woman's corgi (Graham seemed to remember seeing the old woman somewhere before as he fell), and landing in a heap on the counter.

The customers and bank tellers were so shocked by this that all ducked for cover. Grasping this opportunity with one hand, Graham ran into the vault and pulled out four neatly piled sacks, slung them over his shoulder. This would be very sufficient to begin a new life in Mongolia with his Shaman friend, thought Graham and he was getting rather excited at the prospect. However to his horror as soon as he set foot outside the Post Office he was assailed by hoards of outraged biddies, forgeys and general old people. Walking sticks rattled, zimmer frames clashed in anger, small rat-like dogs tore for Raafe formerly known as Ralph, formerly known as Graham clothing.

Graham ran, he ran for his life, he ran for his dignity, he ran for the only place he knew the biddies could not attack him. He ran for the only place that the pensioners would never dare go. Like the Dr Who searching for a staircase, he ran for the Electronics Boutique upon entering the store, the cash-filching-former-Graham was seen by various youths to be carrying a large sum of money. Graham needed no time to think, he ran for his life in the opposite direction, straight into the pensioner army which at that time was being interviewed for a segment on the Miss Cleo Radio Show, with Miss Cleo live on location, complete with a host of cross-dressing Cubans from the Miami office of the Psychic Readers Network.

Raafe (the-man-formerly-known-as-Graham) made a mad dash for Miss Cleo, tripping and falling into the lap of an old lady dressed in a pink-flowered dress. Horrified and embarrassed, Graham looked up to apologize, and to his shock realized that this "lady" had a horrid moustached and beard, yet was wearing a woman's wig and had a horrible pair of flea-shaped earrings. To his horror, Graham realized that this was not some old lady waiting in line, but it was none other than the twin brother of his arch nemesis, the post man, Pishnik!

Pishnik made a grab for Graham, who, by the flea-shaped earrings, had discovered that Pishnik was completely into the business for fleas making products. There ensued a terrible fight, remembered for years after, in which Graham was slapped and ran away, known as the Battle of Gramslapaway. As Graham ran away (after being slapped) he headed for the bus stop so that he could go straight home and pack his things for his emigration to Mongolia. He jumped onto the bus and threw notes at the driver, screaming at him to drive. The bus driver tore away, all the while singing 'Gold' by Spandeau Ballet. When the bus screeched to a stop, Graham jumped out, just managing to keep hold of his bag of money (this was partly because the bus driver was latching onto it also).

However Graham made it safely into his house, but, he had barely let his sigh of relief escape his personage when. He saw the Gang of be-leathered pensioner bikers stretched out in his living room, creeping to the kitchen, Graham made himself a cup of tea and drank it, packed his belongings and scarpered. Yet as he was on his way out the door he saw the start of his, and many pensioners, favourite TV show. It was the Golden Girls and Graham couldn't help but sit and enjoy another show of geriatric adventure.

He was having a blast watching the show until the adverts came on, and graham was bombarded from all sides by offers of stale, mint and toffee flavoured pensioners sweets. The only thing he could do was run straight for the door, up the stairs and into his room. Once he had locked the door, Graham threw random clothes and other items into his 'My Little Pony' satchel. He began to hear banging on the door however and zombie-like groans coming from outside. Graham looked around the room to find out how to escape. That's when he noticed that his flies were undone, after rectifying the matter he continued his search for an escape route, he looked to the window but there was something at the window, which suddenly blocked all light coming into the room.

Graham felt the blood run out of his face, his jaw dropped in horror, and he stood frozen to his place, his pink satchel in his hand. There was no way of escape, he saw, the boards on the door were being bent, the knob rattled, the groans became more urgent. But Graham could not take his eyes from the window, and the thing that was there, which was an odd looking fellow with a nametag reading "TheHappyElf". He poked and prodded the little guy, until he transformed into an hippy elf, an even stranger fellow with a fancy for tie dye clothing and prank calls, then suddenly Graham took off his novelty "happy glasses" and dove through the window to safety, or so he thought. He rushed to Heathrow airport, and bought a ticket on the first commercial flight to Mongolia, little was he to know, his arch nemesis the postman and his wife the insipid "Debbie" were on their way to holiday there.

This development in Graham's twisted tale was only known to him when the plane was 30,000 ft in the air. Graham was sat beside a man who called himself Toodles. He was a rather pungent man of formidable stature. In other words, he smelt and was as tall as he was wide. After 2 hours of hearing Toodles ramble on about how Graham should get in touch with his inner child, Graham decided he needed to go to the toilet. However, when he stood up and looked around for the WC he saw what he could only describe as a scene of occurances he sensed with his optical nerve, at the back of his eye sending electronic signals to his brain creating a visual image of a squint-eyed man with a tiny moustache holding a book high in the air and screaming at the top of his lungs "The Messiah is coming! Messiah is coming! Repent of your foul ways, the Messiah is coming!!!"

Graham stopped right in his tracks and looked at the squint-eyed little man holding a book, which was the good food guide. Graham slapped the man around the face to the applause of spectators and continued on his way. On the way back he noticed his arch nemesis "the postman" and that his insipid wife Debbie was quite attractive actually. He knew a plan was needed, he... looked over to Ernie (the fastest milkman in the west) and asked him for advice on beating the postman, Ernie recommended giving up, going home and investing all his money into ErniesMilk.inc. But of course graham thought that idea was stupid so he looked at the postman, pulled out his lightsabre and as he was dragged away from the bleeding unconscious body of his postman Graham noticed a man with a bomb, crying and kicking out he was knocked unconscious.

He scarce awoke in time to hear "now approaching Ulaanbaatar airport. We will be landing in 13 minutes. We do advise our passengers that once they have left the aircraft, please take the opportunity to receive a machete from the stewardess and do be prepared to run, and keep running. Once [If] you reach the airport, do be careful to avoid the falling debris. Once [If] you leave the airport, please do avoid the strange looking shack as an evil cannibalistic shaman resides there. Have a nice stay and we hope [that if you make it back] you will be flying with us again."

Well when Graham heard this he was Gratified to seize a machete and break for the exit, he fled the plane, time seeming to slow down... as.. he.. ran. The rear end of the place exploded in a fireball of blazing light, Graham decided that on reflection, it did always look better in the movies. He decided to go see about this shack and found it was sitting right next to a hot-dog stand which read "The best hot-dogs in all Mongolia, it ain't dog, but it sure tastes good! (ask the management for an explanation)" Graham decided to eat a hot-dog as he calmly watched how across the street a man was dragged away by soldiers because he was wearing a shirt that read "I love using chapstick". Pieces of buildings kept falling out of the sky, but of course, nothing could really impress Graham at this point. So he turned around and bravely walked into the cottage he had been warned about as he neared this cottage/shack, he heard a weird groaning sound. The sound was vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t put a name and a face to the voice. When all of a sudden the cottage was before him, where a purple door accosted him, and then ignored him totally.

Graham was left with a strange sense of being all alone in the world, when it suddenly hit him that there was no spoon! So he decided to do the most logical thing one would do when accosted (and then ignored) by a purple door in Mongolia. Several logic puzzles and a mug of auntie-mabel's scotch-vodka and lemon tea later Graham had the idea he was searching for. He walked in to confront the shaman before he could bandage the squirming postman and challenged him to a contest of yak surfing on the mountain. Little did Graham know that this was in fact, much like sheep surfing in Wales, and geek surfing in America actually quite popular in Mongolia. He then remembered that the one thing he had forgotten to pack was his sheepboard.

The shaman looked up, his hair covering his eyes. All Graham could see was the shaman's unbroken smile as he lifted out his yak board from behind his David Bowie poster. Graham had to improvise fast, he needed to win this race if he was to get a chance to even speak to the shaman. So Graham came up with a daring plan, he grabbed the post's recumbent form and skated down the mountainside on him. The shaman-his culture thriving upon honour, was outraged by this blatant breach of the health and safety rules, but wasn't one to give up on a challenge.

Faster and Faster they raced, until inevitably Graham who frankly had no idea how to skate, ski or tell the difference between the two, hit a tree. Getting to his feet slowly, he just had time to remark upon the duality of the postmen when his wife's fist impacted on the side of Graham's skull. He awoke to realise his name was Simon and he lived in a box down by the back alley creek- across the street from the neighbourhood pub- called Filby's. He went to the pub and discovered that there were indeed such things as pints, and that they had a remarkable quality of being able to cheer up anyone who had just discovered that their name was Simon.

A few minutes passed, and a rather fruity-looking young man came up and introduced himself; it appeared that Simon had in fact attended an American university, and that he had apparently pledged as a Lambda Chi. The fruity young man, whose real name was something along the lines of Raphael Ortega, had come over with the purpose of inviting Simon to a frat party, where he would be able to participate in that oh-so-great, romanticized activity which had been the centre of attention for so many parties, the oh-so-very-delightful game of "Lets stand around the house for five hours to get a chance at the keg"!!!!! Delighted, Graham jumped up and remembered he was Simon, not Graham. Anyway, he jumped on top of the keg tipped it over and made it foam up.

The frat boys were all about to kick his ass when they realised that they were, after all, Lambda Chis, and that they didn't go around "kicking ass". Instead, they decided to give Simon a big, bad wedgie! Simon closed his eyes and tembled with fear and ghastly anticipation, when all of a sudden the man known as Simon, formerly known as raaph, formerly known as Graham realised something. His name honestly didn't matter, so long as he was alone, so he legged it. Arriving at a small glade near hyde park he attempted to get himself lost the only way he knew how, he drank half a bottle of vodka, lay down on a park bench and concealed himself beneath a newspaper.

This was all working surprisingly well when a member of the London tramps union approached demanding to examine his tramping card, simon graham raafe ralph george chris hermoine having learnt some tramping skills in the summer of '97 when he was living in prague with an artist called Milsavilida and had no money knew that the appropriate response was "I sold it for booze," the official happy with this explanation lied down on the bench next to him and went to sleep. After a few minutes he started to snore, this drove Simon graham raafe ralph george chris hermoine mad to the point of lashing out.

Unfortunately for Simon he lashed out at the bench he was lying on. This infuriated Simon even more so and he proceeded to beat the inert tramp with his other hand, to the point where the tramp saw a light at the end of a tunnel. Unfortunately for the tramp he opened his eyes just in time to see that the light was Simon's lighter which he was using to set the tramp's beard on fire. After this horrifying sequence of events which were not natural behaviour for our beloved Simon Graham Raafe, the tramp understandably called his lawyer and several hours later had deployed a tramp-policing squad to capture Graham. Graham legged it to the nearest tube, hoping against hope to evade capture.

Unfortunately fate had something else in store for him. Graham was just about to board a train to white city when he was knocked unconscious by a blunt weapon bearing a pyramid with an eye resting on it's upper segment.

Graham, who had grown used to being knocked out as one might develop an immunity to a weak toxin stayed conscious just long enough to kick out in the vague direction of the confluence of the man's legs and realize he had missed and just ended up passing out in a very uncomfortable position. He saw, in his nearly-uncounscious state, that his aggressor had been a woman, with a neck that was almost ridiculously long and legs that were nearly 5 feet high. With his last strand of mental power, Graham (or whatever his name was, not that it mattered anymore, really) realized that this was the impersonation of that which he had been fighting against in the first place, the evil Barbie dolls.

Graham knew he was doomed, but finally gave in to the blessed darkness of unconsciousness. He woke, a few hours later, to find himself in nappies, a purple beret, and an ill-fitting led zeppelin tour t-shirt from '73, with a pipe filled with aromatic herbs thrust into his mouth. Simon/Graham/Raafe scratched his head, then cried out in pain as he had scratched it too hard, wondering what the hell nappies were and why he had them on. He looked around, and realized though he was lying on a hammock. The hammock slapped him away, and Simon fell painfully to the floor amid a hundred sweet-smelling herbs.

From the corner in the dark room he was now in, he heard a snicker, and straining his eyes, realized the sound had come from a purple buffalo, who he realised under closer inspection was none other than his reflection in a poorly positioned mirror. *whatever-his-name-is* squealed in delight and rolled over to the mirror chanting ' i am so handsome now i am a purple buffalo', but whilst this was going on, a strange figure emerged from the opposite corner of the room with a pipe filled with aromatic herbs thrust into his mouth.

Simon/Graham/Raafe scratched his head, then cried out in pain as he had scratched it too hard, wondering what the hell nappies were and why he had them on. He looked around, and realized through he was lying on a hammock.

The hammock slapped him away, and Simon fell painfully to the floor amid a hundred sweet-smelling herbs. From the corner in the dark room he was now in, he heard a snicker, and straining his eyes, realized the sound had come from... ..a purple buffalo, who he realised under closer inspection was none other than his reflection in a poorly positioned mirror. *whatever-his-name-is* squealed in delight and rolled over to the mirror chanting 'I am so handsome now i am a purple buffalo', but whilst this was going on, a strange figure emerged from the opposite corner of the room...

Epilogue.

The figure was of course his mother, and as Freudian studies of the past events will show, the root of all grahams problems. She stood over him wearing unsurprisingly the bottom half of a pantomime horse, and a jellyfish similar to one on the back of Grahams neck. She opened her mouth to speak, and Anne Robinson’s voice came out, "Its ok boy(the thought of calling him by any of his names would only confuse the matter more) mummy’s here now, its all ok" He scraped back into the corner of the room, which he saw now was purple, square with no windows, no doors and no light source, yet he could see even though everything was dim.

Suddenly the walls exploded with light, as if a projector was pointing at each wall. Each of the four walls contained a different scene, one was the shamans shack, the other a post office, the next the laboratory in the zoo and the last was a montage of clips of a bus, a plane, a corridor, so many corridors. On the ceiling was projected the ocean, and on the floor was a dark purple nothingness. Graham shouted out: "Your not my mother!" he screamed "Yes I am" she calmly replied "My mother was 4 foot 5, and bald. Ever since the incident with the flea when she was 7" *The male protagonist* spluttered out through sobs "Really? ****" she remarked, then shouted behind her to someone Raafe couldn’t see "George you got the wrong skin loaded." There was a sharp click and everything was darkness.

Then as suddenly as Ralph’s world dissolved, it appeared again, the walls still played their endless narrative but the person in front of him had changed, it was his mother this time. Again she stood over him, again she uttered words of comfort but this time George (or whatever the **** he was called) was more cautious. He grabbed whatever he could find in his pockets, (A mammoth humbug sweet given to him on the plane journey) and jumped at her brandishing it. He (of course) tripped and fell straight through her and everything disappeared again.When the room was turned on again his father appeared, behind a glass barrier."My son." he declared "I know what this must feel like, but believe me we are trying to help you.""Where am I?" questioned Graham. "You are in a secure area, in a government building. Do you remember Dr Gertrude, do you remember agreeing to join our study programme? Do you remember the wires being placed into your spinal cord?""I...." Graham stopped, vague memories were flooding back, too many memories, he felt as if had lived about 4 different lives, "Who am I?""You are simone, you are in a reality created by your own subconscious, a dream if you like, magnified and made real. You've been here for 3 weeks now, and we had you controlled until a few days ago, then more conciouses, more minds flooded the system. We didn’t no what to do, we tried to shut it down but our signals were not getting through, we could only send a few images to help you, to make you remember the shutdown routine""I don’t believe you, why didn’t you just pull the plug?""We were going to, but we decided it was too risky, pulling someone out as crudely as that could scramble the electronic pulses in their brain, turning them into a vegetable, we just couldn’t risk it without trying this first." His father said solemnly,"What must i do?" asked Graham"The jellyfish wrapped around your neck, its not really a jellyfish.""No kidding.""Its a modem port to your spinal column, pull it out and you will be back in the chair of the laboratory. "That’s it?" graham squeaked (he was far beyond normal speech now)"Yup, ju-,"

But graham (Well Simon, but after thinking about it he thought graham was a better name) didn’t hear the rest of the sentence, the shamans head had appeared in front of him, he opened his mouth and said,"You owe me one yak race bitch!" Too which graham was confused, he thought he had already lost one already, but at this stage he didn’t care much for details anymore. He was about to state this to the shaman but the shaman continued "Oh yeah, and don’t listen to these people, they erm...want to kill you or something, well all i remember was its something bad, don’t do what they say, oh and I was wondering, do you think dyed yak-hair hats could be a good fashion accessory, you see I have this cousin in college, and she-"

This time the father interrupted,"Don’t listen to him, he is one of the consousnesses trapped in the programme, as long as your still in here, he stays alive. If you leave he will cease to be." Graham could hear a low murmur now, it was coming from the jellyfish. The father seemed to notice it to. "That’s it, your gaining reality back, pull it out.""NO!" screamed hundreds of voices at once, Graham decided he had to do what he had to do. He reached the back of his head and grabbed the jellyfish.....Simone hit his alarm clock, it took him a while to come round."What a weird dream, I’m not eating brussel sprouts for supper again." He swung around his bed, stood up, took a step to the bathroom and fell over a yak.

-fin