Not as the plants and flowers of Earth, growing peacefully beneath a
simple sun, were the blossoms of the planet Lophai. Coiling and uncoiling
in double dawns; tossing tumultuously under vast suns of jade-green and
balas-ruby orange; swaying and weltering in rich twilights, in aurora-curt-
ained nights, they resembled fields of rooted serpents that dance eternally
to an other-world music.
Strangely enough, even though KrOB and Puzzling Evidence visited
the studio in corporeal, physical form, neither would deign to lend his voice
or commentary to the Show, despite repeated exhortations.
At one point, an incongruous, squealing sound effect was audible in
sudden cry, unneccessarily interpolated into Dr. Howll's presentation, shot
into the mix sportively by KrOB.
But no voice spoke to punctuate this fragmentary violation. And live
recitation from the show host continued, as the only alternative interposed
between the lengthy cascades of recordings, largely documented echoes of
other preserved shows diuturnally dead from earlier cycles.
No extra half hour was required, this time, for this iteration, which ended
at the proper temporal terminus; but had there been listeners, their ears would
have heard the two outliers break the snaky, Mesmeric fascination of their
laptops, seize the microphones and the studio, and, coming into their own,
produce the longed-for hybrid of past, present and future influences, a gift to
lay upon the flower-strewn sacrificial altar of an unknown god.