Free Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn Page A

replication. Six!”
    “That’s my offer. Take it or leave it.”
    “How long will you give us, Mr. Lyttle? Remembering, of course, that Nollop spent all of his youth creating
his
sentence.”
    “Well, I certainly won’t allow more than a few weeks. Especially with all the help you will be receiving. You’ll have until November 16—Nollop’s birth anniversary. Remember, as well, that this offer must still win approval by the Council.”
    Nate thought this fair. The two men shook on it.
    At the subterra meeting tonight the challenge will be put to all present. We hope to relay it throughout the nation. (Please cast it about the Village on our behalf.)
    We will cross our fingers that the Council approves. We’ll know nothing until after the council session tomorrow morning.
    With this most encouraging news I’ll close, but not without saying farewell to my favorite breakfast cereal. (You will, of course, remember to throw out the Special K, yes, Mother?)
    I love you.
    Tassie

The * uic * brown fox * umps over the la * y ** g
     
    NOLLOPTON
    Satto-gatto, September 30
    Mother,
    So much to tell, so little time to tell it. Those who were present at last night’s meeting have chosen to embrace the challenge with absolute relish. The prospect of actually being able to control the outcome of this ghastly assault on our collective spirit, let alone our very humanity, by turning this offensive upon its cephalus, has sent some among our subterra movement to heights of unencompassable ecstasy. The best news of all: the Council is in full agreement with the challenge (It was official as of this morning.), so secure they seem to be in this asinine “unassailable” position of theirs. We approach the ramparts ourselves commensurably secure. High noon awaits.
    At first Nate thought that he might get news to a computer programmer with whom he is familiar—a former college roommate in Orangeburg, South Carolina, who he is certain can crunch the letters, to, in effect, assemble the necessary sentence within a matter of hours. But if the Council were to learn that the sentence was put together by means of artificial intelligence, it might wholly thwart our primary purpose, this being to show that some other human—not Nollop—most certainly not an electronic computing apparatus—was able to come up with the obligatory sentence containing all twenty-six letters of the alphabet using only thirty-two letters in its execution. So he chose to expel that thought without pause. What it will come to will be this: one of us will create it: a sentence to surpass that of Holy Nollop. One of us shall, I am certain, achieve the goal of burying the myth of Nollop forever. For the next forty-six sun-to-suns, this will be our
raison
.
    Mine, yours, even your gentleman companion Rory who perhaps is still unaware of the other legislation to come out of thismorning’s session: “All property left in state of nonoccupation through emigrantal vacatement will be given over to confiscatory oversight by the Council, then borne to official annexation into Nollopian tax-exempt ecclesiastical boroughs, thus falling within clear parameters of Council owner-management.” Even as things exist now, Councilman Harton Mangrove is in the process of moving with his family onto the estate of Georgie Boonswang, whose fish cannery after closure was left in similar circumstance of nonoccupation (but not without “proper” ownership, courtesy of egregious title-alteration!). Other Council members seem to be contemplating similar confiscatory moves.
    I must close now to return to my labors with the “group”: Nate, Ella, Aunt Gwenette, Uncle Amos, each of us in pursuit of the magical, temporarily elusive sentence that shall result in our emancipation—to be sure, our very salvation! Albeit a more corporal form of salvation. Our souls, though, are another matter altogether. To apportion worshipful allegiance to both our Heavenly Omnigreatness, as well as to