Fragments of Literacy

By someone who'd rather not get targeted for destruction for having a sense of humor and a modicum of intelligence

*This story is dedicated to all those who understand that writing is a tough, lonely business, and that people with an inflated sense of self-importance who try to dictate what other people read for pleasure are simply wrong.

Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs glared at the corpses in front of him.

This had been a particularly bad one, and personal. It was tough to tell because the corpses had been so badly charred, but he thought he recognized a few: Hawthorne. King. Asimov. Probably more. He knew them; he'd seen them, over and over on his bookshelves. They were friends, and now they were toast.

Time to do his job. "DiNozzo!" he bellowed. "Get your ass over here, 'cause that's the part that does your best thinking!"

The handsome middle-aged man pretending to be younger than he was and who put the me-me-ME! into Commitment Phobia—which only showed how little regard he had for spelling—hustled over. "Yo, boss." He spotted the pile of corpses, and did a classic double-take, perfected after years of watching old movies with Jack Benny. "Whoa! Is that what I think it is?" He looked once more, turning his double take into a triple take, now that he no longer had a movie image to live up to before moving on with his assigned part. "Is that—a dangling participle that I see hanging off the end there?"

"Yes, DiNozzo, it is," Gibbs said impatiently. "You gonna take some crime scene pictures, or what?"

DiNozzo whipped out his cell phone with its handy-dandy little picture-taking capability. "Sure, boss. The way these babies burned, pictures are all that we'll have left of 'em. You think I can turn these photos into picture books, in memoriam?" He shook his head. "Somebody sure has it in for those guys. I mean, I've heard of teachers going after essay papers with a red pen, but these babies have been schooled!" He clicked a quick fifty or so pictures, trusting that the memory on his cell wouldn't give out. "Who do you think done it, boss?"

"Like it's not obvious?" Gibbs snapped back. "I mean, look at them! Poor, defenseless books, burned to oblivion! This is the worst murder I've ever seen! The bastard who did this is a cold and heartless piece of slime. Of course, it's obvious whodunnit!"

"Uh…not to me, boss."

"You're kidding, DiNozzo."

"Nope. It's my turn to take the dumb blonde role this week. Abby did it last week, McGee before that—"

"All right, all right; be stupid and get it over with. You can come up with some dorky line at the end of the story." Gibbs glared at the charred pages, completely forgetting that to be a well-rounded character one needed to display more than one emotion. Anger was the only one he had room for. "UGramNaz."

"Bless you."

"DiNozzo, I didn't sneeze."

"Sure sounded like it, boss."

"Well, I didn't. I named the suspect: UGramNaz. Short for the Union of Grammar Nazis. Led by a pompous bastard calling himself Lord Adolf."

"You just used a sentence fragment, boss!" DiNozzo exclaimed fearfully. "Boss, do you know what that means?"

"What, DiNozzo?"

"It means," and DiNozzo scanned the area around him, "it means that the UGramNaz will be coming after you. They target anyone that doesn't meet their standards of good writing."

"I already know that, DiNozzo," Gibbs said impatiently, whacking DiNozzo upside the head. "Why do you think Ziva's not around?"

DiNozzo wasn't finished with his dumb blonde act yet, and the head whack helped him to stay in character. "I don't know. Why, boss?"

"Because she's a Mary Sue." Gibbs continued with his one dimensional characterization, using only his snarling voice. Since he was already targeted for destruction by the Grammar Nazis, it didn't seem to matter. "I mean, look at her: classic Mary Sue. Beautiful. She lost her father—"

"They're just estranged, boss, at least until the writers come up with a hackneyed plot about his death so that she can quiver her beautiful lower lip with grief."

"She already did that. She shot and killed her own brother; remember?"

"Oh. Yeah. That." DiNozzo shrugged, completely forgetting that he had just committed three sentence fragments of his own.

"And she sings good enough to pass for a club entertainer. And she speaks more languages than I have fingers. And she can kick ass better than you, not that that's hard, you nancy."

"You've done it now, boss." DiNozzo shook his head. "You've started three sentences with 'and', and you used an English term to describe me instead of good ol' American wuss. You been taking lessons from Ducky?"

"Like I need to," Gibbs snorted. "Point is, she's a Mary Sue. Where's McGee?"

"In mourning," DiNozzo told him, pointing at the figure on his knees on the ground, rocking back and forth in front of the torched books, moaning in anguish.

Gibbs understood at once. "McGee's book must have been among the books that they burned."

"Uh, no, boss. It wasn't. That's why he's in mourning. He thought he was a better writer than that."

Enough was enough, and Gibbs had had enough. After seven seasons of shows and committing to an eighth, he was damn tired and not afraid to show it. "Can someone get this plot moving?" he complained. "We got a bunch of corpses, we got a suspect. What else do we need?"

DiNozzo had the answer to that one. "We need a connection to the Navy, boss. After all, we're the Naval Criminal Investigative Unit."

"Hah." Gibbs showed what he thought of that idea. "Look at NCIS: L.A. They're stretching the navy connection so far that if it was a rubber band, it'd break. Try again, DiNozzo."

"Uh…" DiNozzo worked harder on the concept than a ten year old fanfic writer, and with almost as much success. "Uh…we're the ones investigating it?"

"Good enough for me." Gibbs turned around. "Abby!"

"Yo, Gibbs!" Abby appeared, taller than usual on roller blades and hefting two Caf-Pows, one in each hand.

Gibbs stared at her. "Aren't you supposed to be in your lab, working up clues?"

"Sure, Gibbs. But this is a short-short, and changing the locale of the story will take too many words. If I want to appear in this story, I'm gonna have to do it right here." Abby slurped a phenomenally long sip of her Caf-Pow, completely missing Gibbs's next line. "What?"

"I said," Gibbs repeated impatiently, "where the hell is my clue? Don't I always show up in your lab when you have a clue for me?"

"You may not have noticed, Gibbs, but this is not my lab. This is the crime scene, out on the street, with a bunch of burned books."

"If you're going to visit the crime scene, you're going to have to come up with a clue right here, Abbs. The only other option is to go back to your lab and turn this thing into a novella."

"Okay." Abby was more than willing to cooperate, which was more than could be said for the site administrators who were busy counting the revenue they were getting from the banner ads streaking across the screens. She skated over to the piles of burned books, did a wheelie on her blades, then leaned over and picked up a single charred portion of a page. "Aha!"

"Wha'cha got, Abbs?"

"I got a Caf-Pow, Gibbs."

"I mean, in your other hand."

"I got another Caf-Pow, Gibbs. You need glasses, or what?"

"I already got glasses. I mean, the clue, Abbs."

"Oh. That." She juggled the two Caf-Pows with the speck of ash that used to be part of a book. "Aha!"

"You already said that, Abby," Gibbs pointed out. "You want help finding your place in the script?"

"Nope. Got it right here. I can read, Gibbs," Abby returned, glaring at DiNozzo.

"Never said you couldn't, Abby," DiNozzo protested.

"Yes, you did!"

"That was last week. It was your turn to be the stupid one."

"Oh. Right." Abby turned back to Gibbs. "I found him."

"Him, who?"

"Gibbs!" Abby wailed. "It's Tony who gets to be stupid. You are never stupid! You are always smart! Without you, we'd never be able to finish the plot with a soul-satisfying shoot out where the bad guys get what's coming to them!"

"Abby," Gibbs reminded her, "this is a short story. We've got word limits here, and we're rapidly approaching them. Where the hell is the bastard who destroyed these books along with the hearts of the writers?"

"And the hearts of the people who read," Ducky inserted.

"Ducky? When did you show up?"

"Just now. I heard you discussing the impending conclusion of this opus, and realized that I must make my entrance within the next sentence or two or risk being relegated to a mere mention at the beginning of the story, as was our dear Mary Sue otherwise known as Ziva David, accent on the vid. Hence, I hastened—"

"Yeah, yeah. Abby, what's the clue?"

"There." Abby pointed to a man in the crowd. "That's Lord Adolf."

Clearly there was danger, and it was close. Lord Adolf was at least six feet tall and six feet around the middle, and expanding rapidly. His hair was slicked back into rigid neatness, and the tie around his neck was tied so tightly that it was threatening to choke him. The belt that held up the man's pants burst apart as the man puffed up faster and faster.

"Watch out!" Gibbs yelled. "He's gonna blow with self-importance!"

There was no time to waste. Every member of the NCIS team whipped out their handguns and aimed at the encroaching menace. Even Abby snatched up her remaining Caf-Pow, certain that the drink would have some sort of beneficial effect if it was splashed over the suspect. The remainder of the crowd, huddled miserably around the remainder of the books, drew back in fear.

Seven feet, and still growing. The figure in front of them roared with laughter. "I am the arbiter of good taste!" Lord Adolf boomed, nearly flattening the team with the volume of his voice and the stench of his foul breath. "You may only read those books and stories which I determine are fit to be read!"

A sentence fragment tried to escape from the man's pocket. He stuffed it back into the darkness, shrieking with laughter.

"Fire!" Gibbs yelled.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Shots rang out from every NCIS team member's handgun. Even Ziva appeared from where she'd been admiring her pert little backside in a mirror to swing an Uzi into position to defend the world from unnecessary and unwanted censorship, knowing that it was only a short hop, skip, and a jump to censoring pictures of pretty Mossad officers admiring themselves in mirrors. She wasn't taking any chances with her future.

No effect. The figure continued to grow. "You cannot stop me!" Lord Adolf roared. "I will use my powers of Arrogance to inflict My Opinion upon you!"

Gibbs swore lividly, knowing that his language was so far into Mature Adult that it would never be permitted in this story. "Our guns! They're only props! We can't kill this son of an hyperbole!"

A meek and small little man, attired neatly in a polo and khakis, stepped up beside Gibbs. "Excuse me," he said politely, and pulled out his own handgun. "Please take cover."

Bang!

Lord Adolf deflated like a burst balloon, spewing forth the freed works of writers that he'd censored, poor grammar and all. Each story sprang into the air, crying out its gratitude before flying off to spread joy to the hearts of fanfic readers everywhere, knowing that even badly written works would touch someone's soul before sinking deep into the overwhelming numbers of each fandom.

Gibbs swung around to their savior. "Who the hell are you?"

The little man extended his card. "I'm the union representative of the Writer's Guild," he introduced himself. "I heard the fuss, and I couldn't help but intervene. You see, Lord Adolf and his sort were trying to censor what people were reading, and we couldn't have that. Understand, we professional writers want to put out well-written stuff just as much as anyone else, but we also have to consider our audience. Not everyone wants to read or watch high quality, technically correct literature all the time. Escapist trash is also quite acceptable. Not only that, but some of us are actually quite talented at churning out escapist trash in the remarkably short time periods mandated by the various sponsors." He uttered a short little laugh. "Really, Agent Gibbs, we have our own jobs to think about. You've seen the scripts we turn out; are you really going to defend the position that Prime Time television provides literary value?" He shook his head. "Agent Gibbs, you must get away from your boat more often. I shall speak to your show's creative producers. I believe that they are union members in good standing."

"You do that," Gibbs told him. "And while you're at it, see if you can persuade 'em to give me a decent love interest." He turned back to the rest of his team. "That's it. Danger's over. Case is solved."

"I'm safe?" Ziva Mary Sue David beamed. "I can go back to being perfect in every way except in how I slaughter English colloquialisms which is still fine since it sounds cute?"

"You can, David." Gibbs turned to DiNozzo. "Okay, DiNozzo. It's now time for you to close this story with some ridiculous line. What'cha got?"

"Sorry, boss. All out of stupid lines."

"What do you mean? You told me it was your turn to be stupid. Gimme a stupid line."

DiNozzo shrugged, and indicated the still steaming pile of black slime, all that was left of the deflated Lord Adolf. "Let's face it, boss. After listening to the foolishness that this guy spouted, anything I could come up with would sound intelligent."

The end of the story, though not the end of attempts at cyber-censorship. I implore everyone, writers and readers both, to speak out against those who would dictate what you are permitted to read for pleasure rather than acknowledging your ability to choose for yourself.