You Can't Open the Mayonnaise!: Unseen University
A comical farce by Mobius Shadow,
Whose talented writings merged with those of Terry Pratchett's created this fic but still couldn't open the mayonnaise.
The characters are the property of PTerry; the mayonnaise is the property of SMobius, who has gone to get the pliers.
* * *
Mustrum Ridcully, current Arch-chancellor of Unseen University, awoke in his chair, belched, and decided that it was time for a snack. He clomped down the stairs of his room to the first floor, where he passed through several impossible space-time phenomena before arriving in the kitchen.
The kitchen was a huge room that was, according to the nascent theory of K-space, sharing its grease with all other kitchens in the universe. Ridcully didn't care. What he wanted just now was a liverwurst hero sandwich.
With the ease of practice, he reached in the dark for the rolls he used- there they were!, the liverwurst- there it was!, and the mayonnaise- he hand went down Ponder Stibbon's pant pocket.
"What the devil are you doing up Ponder?" asked Ridcully, whose pre- programmed muscle movements were already reaching for a knife to slice the bread and liverwurst.
"Well, sir, I've come down hear for a sandwich, like yourself, sir, and I can't get the new jar of mayonnaise open. I'm using wrench, sir."
Ridcully blinked several times. "You can't get the mayonnaise open? What kind of a wizard ARE you. Give me that thing. You've been around that thinking machine too long." Ridcully took the jar and looked at it. The label, in raised glass instead of a paper wrapper, said: ACME, and the list of nutrition facts were listed on the other side. Ridcully grasped it firmly with both hands and tried to turn the lid. Nothing happened. He tried again, and started to turn purple. The lid would not turn.
"What is this, some sort of trick? Well, I'll fix that." He set the jar on the floor. "Stand back, Ponder. This could get ugly." He rolled up the sleeves and threw a fireball at the jar. There was a bang, and when the smoke cleared the floorboards around the jar were charcoal, and the contained was covered with a thin layer of ash, but still tightly shut.
"Get the Dean. He knows some of the better spells. We're going to defeat this thing one way or another."
Ponder went to fetch the dean, then went on a five minute detour to get some other wizards to help him fetch the Dean. Fifteen minutes later, they returned, panting, and laid the sleeping body of the Dean out in the kitchen floor. Ridcully looked at it critically, and jumped on the stomach, which sank and brought the Dean's head up like it was on strings. This hit Ridcully in the leg, which knocked him off balance in the small crowd, and unfortunately hitting a somnambulating Rincewind, who awoke and whose scream was smothered as the weight came down on him.
"Arch-chancellor, you're not supposed to do that to a sleepwalker," said Ponder. To the group of five or so around them, he added, "Do any of you chaps thing you can open this jar of mayonnaise?"
"Lemme try," said the Dean, getting up.
Ridcully took charge. "Everyone is advised to stand behind something large and immovable."
"Like you," said Rincewind under his breath as he crouched behind the Luggage, which had been following him not because it cared so much as it was interested.
"Okay." The Dean placed the mayonnaise jar at one end of the kitchen, huffed down to the other, and said some intelligible word at the top of his lungs. The air was suddenly two thousand degrees hotter, and a wall of blue fire shot from his hands and passed down the room before slamming into the other end. Some of the less crispy wizards looked through the smog. There was the mayonnaise, perfectly fine, amongst the rubble that had once been a par-boiler.
"What's going on?" Eskarina Smith, the University's only female alumnus, was standing at the doorway in her nightgown.
Ridcully sighed and brushed some of his burnt robe away. "Esk, did any of the students do this?" she shook her head and yawned. "Okay. The following is top secret: The staff has been trying for about half an hour to open the demon jar of mayonnaise at that end of the room. I'm only telling you this because I like you, understand. That, and you walked into the room at a bad moment." Eskarina smiled. She had managed to win over Ridcully's sexist attitudes by occasionally joining him on his 'jogs' around the university.
Exercise had never really caught on.
"I can try." Eskarina probed the mayonnaise with her mind. She could sense nothing. She then tried manually opening it, which was rapidly replaced respectfully by banging, whacking, jumping up and down on, throwing fireballs at, looking mournfully at, and finally hating the jar of mayonnaise. She kicked it, hard, and it shot off into the depths of the pantry.
"It's eleven o'clock. I give up. Let's all go have pizza." There were cheers, and Rincewind caught her as she fell over, stretched her gently across the top of the Luggage as the faculty headed out the door and into the night of Ankh-Morpork.
A comical farce by Mobius Shadow,
Whose talented writings merged with those of Terry Pratchett's created this fic but still couldn't open the mayonnaise.
The characters are the property of PTerry; the mayonnaise is the property of SMobius, who has gone to get the pliers.
* * *
Mustrum Ridcully, current Arch-chancellor of Unseen University, awoke in his chair, belched, and decided that it was time for a snack. He clomped down the stairs of his room to the first floor, where he passed through several impossible space-time phenomena before arriving in the kitchen.
The kitchen was a huge room that was, according to the nascent theory of K-space, sharing its grease with all other kitchens in the universe. Ridcully didn't care. What he wanted just now was a liverwurst hero sandwich.
With the ease of practice, he reached in the dark for the rolls he used- there they were!, the liverwurst- there it was!, and the mayonnaise- he hand went down Ponder Stibbon's pant pocket.
"What the devil are you doing up Ponder?" asked Ridcully, whose pre- programmed muscle movements were already reaching for a knife to slice the bread and liverwurst.
"Well, sir, I've come down hear for a sandwich, like yourself, sir, and I can't get the new jar of mayonnaise open. I'm using wrench, sir."
Ridcully blinked several times. "You can't get the mayonnaise open? What kind of a wizard ARE you. Give me that thing. You've been around that thinking machine too long." Ridcully took the jar and looked at it. The label, in raised glass instead of a paper wrapper, said: ACME, and the list of nutrition facts were listed on the other side. Ridcully grasped it firmly with both hands and tried to turn the lid. Nothing happened. He tried again, and started to turn purple. The lid would not turn.
"What is this, some sort of trick? Well, I'll fix that." He set the jar on the floor. "Stand back, Ponder. This could get ugly." He rolled up the sleeves and threw a fireball at the jar. There was a bang, and when the smoke cleared the floorboards around the jar were charcoal, and the contained was covered with a thin layer of ash, but still tightly shut.
"Get the Dean. He knows some of the better spells. We're going to defeat this thing one way or another."
Ponder went to fetch the dean, then went on a five minute detour to get some other wizards to help him fetch the Dean. Fifteen minutes later, they returned, panting, and laid the sleeping body of the Dean out in the kitchen floor. Ridcully looked at it critically, and jumped on the stomach, which sank and brought the Dean's head up like it was on strings. This hit Ridcully in the leg, which knocked him off balance in the small crowd, and unfortunately hitting a somnambulating Rincewind, who awoke and whose scream was smothered as the weight came down on him.
"Arch-chancellor, you're not supposed to do that to a sleepwalker," said Ponder. To the group of five or so around them, he added, "Do any of you chaps thing you can open this jar of mayonnaise?"
"Lemme try," said the Dean, getting up.
Ridcully took charge. "Everyone is advised to stand behind something large and immovable."
"Like you," said Rincewind under his breath as he crouched behind the Luggage, which had been following him not because it cared so much as it was interested.
"Okay." The Dean placed the mayonnaise jar at one end of the kitchen, huffed down to the other, and said some intelligible word at the top of his lungs. The air was suddenly two thousand degrees hotter, and a wall of blue fire shot from his hands and passed down the room before slamming into the other end. Some of the less crispy wizards looked through the smog. There was the mayonnaise, perfectly fine, amongst the rubble that had once been a par-boiler.
"What's going on?" Eskarina Smith, the University's only female alumnus, was standing at the doorway in her nightgown.
Ridcully sighed and brushed some of his burnt robe away. "Esk, did any of the students do this?" she shook her head and yawned. "Okay. The following is top secret: The staff has been trying for about half an hour to open the demon jar of mayonnaise at that end of the room. I'm only telling you this because I like you, understand. That, and you walked into the room at a bad moment." Eskarina smiled. She had managed to win over Ridcully's sexist attitudes by occasionally joining him on his 'jogs' around the university.
Exercise had never really caught on.
"I can try." Eskarina probed the mayonnaise with her mind. She could sense nothing. She then tried manually opening it, which was rapidly replaced respectfully by banging, whacking, jumping up and down on, throwing fireballs at, looking mournfully at, and finally hating the jar of mayonnaise. She kicked it, hard, and it shot off into the depths of the pantry.
"It's eleven o'clock. I give up. Let's all go have pizza." There were cheers, and Rincewind caught her as she fell over, stretched her gently across the top of the Luggage as the faculty headed out the door and into the night of Ankh-Morpork.