» This mage magic made me Smatholic. Why? Where were the Kwindus or the under-explored Puccips (most famous for pumping) to catch another convert at the heels? Unable to prove their capacity for events above two tremendors, their kind restricted from entering the ten-thousand yard boundary of any celestial object larger than a moon.

» The magic was tremendous, firstly.

» I was perched on a bench in the stately park of Gulugulu on the planet Tremendosaur, famous for producing tremendous experiences at the rate a sun spits out bits of Hyrogen. Being my fifth visit to Tremendosour I had anticipated an experience on the order of five tremendors.

» From about ten foot high came a man, his trajectory set such that the arc it traced across the bright green sky would orthogonally intersect the unit vector that defined my forward facing direction, that is, he was coming for a seat in my lap. “This isn’t too tremendous,” I recall telling myself.

» Tremendors are the standard unit for measuring the tremendousness of events. Yoto Giawana was its inventor. He was a two-shirted sort of man. Such a concept – to be able to measure tremendousness – well, it rippled through the Tremendology scientific community not for its value, but for its weight in paper, which, considering the University of Tremendology was situated on five-hundred lifeboats in the middle of a sea, was almost tidal.

» It’s crucial for the reader to know that the University of Tremendology, abbreviated as the WUT (the first word being a tremendous event in itself, due to its length), was founded by Hooloo Huffin-90, who, while cleaving his way through thick jungle encountered a mage whose magic turned him instantaneously Smatholic.

» I smell hot coffee and a coincidence.

» The man whose dynamics were realizing a fixed point on my lap was too busy in his state of being ten foot from the ground to notice the collision. There are Locomoco-11s in both of my eyes, as there are in everyone’s. They decorate the cortical view with wonderful vectors and integrals – a precision that no sloppy sphere of evolution could ever match. Many times I am suddenly struck by the sympathy of a concept: there exist intelligent species in this galaxy that function without Locomoco-11s to show the way, so to say.

» My arcing companion, I was convinced, was such a target of my sympathy. He was clearly a vectorless viewer because our noses were about to greet.

» And there he fell from his giraffe compatriot and landed in my lap in one second, the gravity on this planet being one-meter-per-second.

» The reader may be tired of me interjections, but I must insist to build the scene: there are only instantaneous velocities in this universe, no notion of changes in velocity. The punishment is ten years in a zero-gravity confinement with any mention of the ‘a’ word.

» “Please.” said the man in my lap. “Have a seat.” He looked at me in the studious way one might note a puddle of gravy in a bathtub.

“Thank you,” I said – an involuntary mannerism from my childhood. “I am already sitting.”

“Ah, so you are, yes.”

“And, so are you.”

“Is that so?” The man on my lap looked to the branches above us for a sign, found it, found the giraffe, and then concluded: “So I am. So I am.” He was hunched, swaying on my one knee as he was, and now he took a moment to correct himself, collect himself, and dissect himself.

» He handed me one of his kidneys.

» “No use for this any more, I’ve got two.”

“Well, I don’t need three,” and I offered the kidney back.

“Excuse me sir,” I’d decided then that I’d had enough of this tremendous-less experience. I prepared the hot words I was going to use on the planet border control on my flight out. No five tremendor occurrence was to be had here.

“Excuse me, but you are in my way, blocking my view. I’m waiting for something tremendous and I need to see it coming so that I can snatch it from the sky before it flies me by. You on my lap will not do, you are blocking my view.”

“You too?” and he straightened up like fire hose suddenly full of water.

“Me too, who?”

“I thought I was the only one, I can’t believe it, I’m not alone.”

“If he won’t de-lap me and if it is beyond me to be rude and insist he climb off,” I thought, “then, I must continue.”

“Alone in what?” I asked.

“Two kidneys! You too!” he shouted so loudly a ring of grass fanned away from him. “Would you believe it! What a tremendous event that Tremendosaur has bestowed upon me this time!”

» The man sprang off my lap and onto one of his toes which kept him erect with the mechanical precision of a robotic ballerina.

» “Thank you,” I said, feeling a little less claustrophobic and happy for it.

“I am already sitting,” he replied.

I frowned. Was I being jested or pranked? I’d prefer custard or ketchup pies in my face any day over the awful chaos this power-toed man spewed from the hole in his face.

“I am a mage,” said the man as he juggled between toes on his feet. “And I am magical.”

My frown insisted it stay there and so I let it be.

“I come from the planet Kiddle-Ops and my magic will perform miracles.” He waved his hand in the air like a sodden mop and plucked half a lung, a reel of kidney, a brain stem, and a femur from inside himself to the outside of himself.

» He showed me them, all in one hand.

» “Observe!” he commanded, and then eyed the collection of organs.

“My what tiny organs for a man of your size. Shouldn’t you put those back?” I asked. It seemed a dangerous business to be moving one’s insides outside. Who knew what went where and which plugged into what?

“I don thee,” said the man, “a Smatholic!” And he threw all the body parts into the sky, right into the open mouth of the giraffe which gobbled them up, and then there shot a laser into my face which was so bright my Locomoco-11s fizzed out.

I thought it came from his hands, but, as the mage told me many decades later when we crossed paths at a Wikos’n Woozy, he sources his spells from his chest. A robust source for spells, for he has two, in case one source should fail.

» The mage was topless that day.

» The light hit me like butter hits the face from the fifth floor of a hotel. I wanted to bin my clothes. With no vectors to guide me I flew ballistic into a new reality where I witnessed: a person in a white robe hovered not three feet from my eyes. A halo hung above her head, inscribed with the word, “Gesus.”

» Everything was tremendous.