"Mail call!"
    "Oh, thanks, T..."
    But it was not Tanya.  Bart had to look twice at the young man in the T-shirt and blue jeans.
    "Prince Ethelred!  What on earth are you doing delivering the mail?"
    "Red," corrected the prince. "I don't go by Ethelred anymore."
    "You don't go by ..."  Bart was fumbling for coherence.
    "Got a holy envelope for you," said Prince Red, holding out a standard hole-riddled interoffice envelope.  "It's not holy.  It's hole-y.  Get it?" He snickered.
    "Um, yes, I get it," said Bart. "I even got it the first ten thousand times."
    "You're pretty sharp," said the mail-carrying Prince. "At first, I thought it meant a sacred relic, but Tanya explained it to me."  He blushed profusely.
    "What I don't get is why you are delivering the mail.  We have rules about non-employees ..."
    "Tanya told me about a vacancy for a mail carrier."  He blushed again.  "I mean, since I liked doing it so much.  So, I applied, and they hired me!  Tanya's working the first floor.  It goes faster that way."
    "Dang!  What's become of state government?  It took them three months to make me an offer!  Sheesh!"
    "Oh, my!  What's that smell?"
    Up until that moment, the prince had apparently not noticed the widespread devastation in Bart's work area.  But he knew the smell.  He looked anxiously around and finally spotted the dragon head on the floor.
    "Ah, it's unattached," said the prince with relief. "That's why the place reeks of worm blood."
    "I'm afraid that's mostly me," Bart confessed. "It's been three days, and I must've showered twenty times, but it doesn't seem to do any good.  Does it, uh, give me any special powers?  Invincibility?"
    "Afraid not," said the prince. "It's just hard to get off and smells bad.  Uh, what happened?"
    "Well, I guess it just blundered in, the same way you did.  And you'd left your sword here, and I just ..."
    "You slew the worm?"  Prince Ethelred's eyes widened with new respect.
    "Well, I just ...  I don't know.  The sword kind of seemed to know what it was doing on its own ..."
    "I've heard about that," piped a new voice, joining the conversation.  Peaburp was striding down the ruined row of cubicles. "Prince Ethelred!  What happened to your robe and crown?"
    The prince blushed.
    "Red," said Bart, stifling a guffaw. "He calls himself 'Red' now."
    "Red?" said the dwarf in confusion. "I can't call you that!  You're the Crown Prince, for Pete's sake!"
    "Not anymore," said Red, drawing himself up proudly. "I'm going to stay here and deliver mail.  With Tanya!"
    "Uh, guys, could you give me a hand here?" Bart cut in. "I have this ... head thing ... to get rid of."
    Red and Peaburp turned abruptly toward him.
    "The Help Desk was no help.  Facilities won't touch it.  It's too big for me to carry very far by myself."  Bart was wringing his hands.  "I tried putting it in my wastebasket, but ..."
    "Didn't work, huh?" said Peaburp sympathetically.
    "No, they didn't go for it.  Not only that, but it crushed my wastebasket, and they won't replace it."
    "Why not?" asked Red.
    "Ten Mile Rule," muttered Bart. "It's a long story."
    "Here's what we'll do," said Peaburp crisply. "Bart, you stand on your chair, since you're the strongest.  Uh, the one without wheels.  Then Prince ... uh, Red ... and I will hoist the worm head up to you, and you can shove it back through the wormhole."
    They did as Peaburp directed.
    "Now, I'm going after it," said the dwarf.
    "Wha-a-at?"  Both Bart and Red were taken by surprise.
    "Oh, I won't be gone long," said Peaburp reassuringly. "I'm going to get Twimwose, my sweetie.  I don't want her digging rocks like a slave.  I'm going to bring her here.  Sheldon's been showing me around.  I have my eye on a nice, three-bedroom house.  Anyway, she doesn't know where I am."
    "Does Sheldon know about this?" asked Bart skeptically.
    "Oh, yes.  I have his permission.  He told me we needed some LAN managers."
    "Oh, come now," scoffed Bart. "Those positions require skilled, experienced technical personnel."
    "So did the Unix Administrator job," countered Peaburp. "Twimwose is twice as smart as I am."
    And with that, he scrambled through the wormhole.

    Bart was not happy to see Harry.  Bart was never happy to see Harry.  Harry was Bart's boss, and he never came around unless there was trouble.
    "Hey, Bart!" said Harry jovially. "How's the wife?"
    "Been divorced for ten years," Bart muttered.
    "And kids?"
    "Don't have any."
    "Good, good!" bellowed Harry, patting Bart on the back. "Say, since I just happened to be in the area, ..."
    "Right," said Bart.
    "There are just a couple of matters I ..." Harry looked blankly at the charred cubicles. "What happened here?"
    "Just a little fire," said Bart. "Followed by a sprinkler deluge."
    "Oh," shrugged Harry. "But as I was saying.  COBOL Guy left."
    "Left?" Bart was incredulous. "Why?"
    "Something about a keyboard, I think," said Harry. "Or it could've been the hundred thousand dollar consulting job."
    "Wh-a-a-at?  There's no market for COBOL!  It's a dead language!"
    "Well, apparently, it's getting up and walking around again," said Harry. "But the point is, we need someone to get us some test data out of the old legacy systems."
    "So, just hire another COBOL guy ..." Bart started to stammer as the realization hit him. "Wai-ait a minute!  Not me!  Oh, no!  I don't know any COBOL!"
    "Says on your record that you do," corrected Harry.
    "That was a long time ago!" protested Bart.
    "Good!" said Harry affably. "I knew I could count on you.  Oh.  And get this place cleaned up.  Looks like a pig sty."

    "Help!" chirped a voice from over Bart's shoulder.
    Following his encounter with Harry, Bart didn't know whether to code or go blind, so he wasn't particularly upset by the latest interruption.  Must be Peaburp coming back from Euphonia and needing a hand down.
    But it wasn't.  The hair poking through the wormhole was like straw, both in color and consistency.  Not like Peaburp's curly brown mop.  And as the full dwarf tumbled after the hair into his cubicle, Bart realized that this one was female.
    "Ah, I bet you're Twimwose," guessed Bart.
    "Correct!" peeped Twimwose anxiously.
    "So, does Peaburp need a hand climbing through?" he ventured.  But he knew something was wrong.
    "He's been captured!" sobbed Twimwose. "By the Dark Lord's goons!"
    "How ...?"
    "We were on our way ... here," explained the dwarf. "We were so happy to be together again ... We weren't careful.  We didn't see them."
    "How did you get away?" asked Bart.
    "Bit his hand and kicked 'im in the groin," she said with a satisfaction that temporarily cut through her concern. "I have to see Sheldon!"
    "Uh, gee, I don't know what Sheldon can do ..."
    "Peaburp said to see Sheldon," she insisted. "Sheldon!  Sheldon!"
    Sheldon was stumbling nearsightedly down the corridor.
    "Yes?" he said, craning his neck to get a closer view of the visitor.
    "Sheldon?" she asked.
    "You must be Twimwose," said Sheldon, squinting down at her. "Where's my buddy?"
    "Peaburp has been captured by the Dark Lord!" Twimwose began to blubber again.
    "Well, then, I'll just have to go and get him back!" snapped Sheldon with conviction.
    "Oh, can you?" cried Twimwose hopefully.
    "You bet ..." began Sheldon.
    "Uh, Sheldon," Bart interjected. "You're a geek."
    "So?" retorted Sheldon. "I don't think you have much room to criticize!"
    "Don't get me wrong," said Bart. "You're a great geek, but a geek nonetheless.  You don't know anything about wizards and stuff."
    "I read about them and go to conventions.  When I can take off work," Sheldon replied, a tad insulted.
    "Yeah, but this is the real thing.  Never mind the magic, even.  What are you going to do if you run into a bunch of this Dark Lord guy's thugs?"
    "I'll figure it out when the time comes," Sheldon insisted. "It doesn't matter.  They've got my little buddy.  And I don't intend to miss that Star Trek convention just because I don't have backup!"
    He turned to Twimwose.  "Can you, uh, give me some directions?"
    "Directions, nothing!" said Twimwose. "I'll take you there!"
    And Sheldon and the dwarf clambered through the wormhole.
    "Great!" sighed Bart. "First, the COBOL.  Now, this.  What am I going to do if Unix goes down?"