"What's the matter, Iris?" Kip's father asked.

She grumbled: "I'm depressed."

"Why?"

"I'm fat. And lazy."

"Oh."

"You do realize your proposition is ridiculous."

Kip's eyes lazily shut, opened. "I... I don't think so."

"But you want to eradicate glaciers."

"Yes."

"You don't find that ridiculous?"

"No. Do you?"

"I just said..."

The black woman's eyes bulged dangerously, like ripe, angry little grapes. Kip saw a little table, saw the ripe, angry little grapes on the table, saw a heavy little hammer smash and smush them. The white goo tasted like cranberries.

Kip thought that was odd.

"Look," he started, "glaciers are evil. You don't know them like I do. Have you ever even seen one?"

The bulge increased. "I... no."

"Don't you wonder what's underneath?"

"No."

"I think that is ridiculous."

An exasperated groan escaped the mulatto lips, and the grapes grew precariously larger. They're just about to pop, thought Kip. He'd been attacking them with his little hammer for just over a minute, now.

Kip sat himself down in an uncomfortable chair at the end of what he felt was a pompously long table; the type that was setup so as to mimic the feeling of being in the nosebleed section.

Seated at the other end of the table, approximately seven kilometers away, were four people, stacked so closely together they resembled Mount Rushmore, save for the fact that one of them was a black woman. She stuck out like a sore thumb. Or rather, like a thumb sore from being struck multiple times with a hammer.

Kip thought about what it would be like to hit her in the face with a hammer.

He smiled again. Somewhere off in Space, his mother nodded approvingly.

Kip's father got a lot of guff for smoking KOOL cigarettes.

The men at his office called him "Nigger."

He laughed every time.

Kip's first wife, Katrina, was afflicted with multiple disorders; one being the scourge of over-glamorous women everywhere, the rest pertaining to the way she preferred cereal boxes and silverware be arranged, especially in others' homes.

They had met in high school, the day after Kip's mother received a terrible burn on the left side of her face in a horrific accident involving the stove, a small dog, and a Dutch apple pie. Her students took to calling her Red, which was short for Red Clam Chowder, which looked a great deal like her face.

Kip never officially asked Katrina out on a date. It, more or less, just happened. When Kip considered the fact for the first time a month after they were wed, he certainly considered it odd - very queer indeed, his exact thoughts being - and mused as to whether the occurrence should make him feel powerful or powerless. Kip was somewhat obsessed with thoughts about power. Not necessarily the thing itself, but the thoughts were addictive, like the KOOL cigarettes his father smoked.

After taking to mind the fact that he hadn't convinced Katrina to eat a light Caesar salad for dinner, he decided on powerless.

One of the doors that led into the freezer opened quickly, and a secretary shot Kip a colder-than-appropriate glare as he pulled his hands out of his pants.

"The board is ready for you," she said. After waiting a few seconds, added, "Mr. Pilgrim."

"Um," he said.

On a bright Monday morning in 1974, Kip Pilgrim was 17 years old, and was making his breakfast. His mother was telling him that he needed to smile more. In his big head, Kip was politely responding that she needed to diet more. Losing a couple hundred pounds would be beneficial to your health, he thought. As it were.

Mrs. Pilgrim was a schoolteacher. She had once found a garish cartoon depicting several stickmen holding harpoons, shouting, "Call Captain Ahab! Let's go PILGRIM HUNTING!"

Remember that, Kip smiled. His mother nodded approvingly.

It begins. Part VII. ^

Kip had always been severely opposed to destructive things. He was very well known for his articles on the subject, most of them decrying the injustices of the Great Gun, War, though some, including his most recent, focused around the lesser derringer of environmental protection. In fact, he alone had convinced the Mayor of Snellville not to cut down the oak trees on the sides of Main Street through an ingenious maneuver that involved the application of hefty amounts of sheep offal to the stumps in front of City Hall. Granted, he had spent the night in jail, wherein he had an unpleasant experience with soap, but that was the price of preservation, and he bore it with the staid determination inherent of peaceful warriors like himself.

But as he sat in an overmuch air-conditioned office, gingerly tucking his fingertips beneath the elastic waistband of his undershorts in an attempt to ward off the more negative effects of frostnip, he couldn't help but wonder if perhaps - just perhaps - Kip Pilgrim had taken it just a titch too far.

But; that was a long time ago.