A Three-Donut Vacation: XX. Teleport Tom is Your Friend

Written 5 July, 2008

A Three-Donut Vacation

XX: Teleport Tom is Your Friend

“This is it,” said BonBon in a conspiratorial whisper. “Our destination.”

We were standing at a doorway with a bright picture of Teleport Tom pasted on its door. Tom was still in Condition “Tom is Vigilant." A nearby sign read “Teleport Tom is Your Friend!”

Without a pause Sweetie pulled a Sharpie from her smock and drew mustaches and thick eyebrows on Tom.

“My apologies, BonBon,” she said, glancing at his not dissimilar features.

“He could be a cousin,” BonBon shrugged. “And now I am off to France. I just checked my PDA, and it seems I’ve been promised a position with the Baguette Publicity Board. It’s not much, but it’s a start!”

Sweetie hugged him, and I did too (he pinched my bottom), and BonBon was off to a brilliant career as a bread publicist.

The door was locked, but Sweetie produced her plastic security key and ran it through the scanner. The door didn’t open.

“Rats,” hissed Sweetie. “They’ve raised the access level! And only two people have Level I access.”

“Who?” I hissed.

“The Director,” she said, “—and...”

“ImSoNotaDiva Bartlett.”

Sweetie was shocked. It’s a condition that rarely afflicts her. “How did you know that?”

“Who’s writing this blog?” I asked. “Of course I figured it out. She’s the logical choice for a villain. Besides, leaving your arch-nemesis out of the story would be like Superman without Lex Luthor. We’ll come up with some plot contrivance to explain how she got back in grace here so quickly after that Copybot fiasco.”

“We have to find her,” Sweetie said. “I wish BonBon were still here.”

“Me too,” I said. “I liked him.”

“So somehow,” I said, “we have to get Diva’s security card away from her and bring it back here.”

“Well, not only her card,” Sweetie said. “There’s an additional security device.”

“Oh, no!” I said. “What?”

“See that screen there? That’s a retinal scanner.”

I was beginning to think those scone weapons would come in handy.

A Three-Donut Vacation: XIX. A Rivalry Ends

The Lowly Funnel Cake’s Resemblance to a Plate Full of Beignets has Created

a Strong Backlash Against it, Especially Outside of the Southern United States

Where it Reigns Supreme, Second Only to the Glazed Donut

Written 5 July, 2008

A Three-Donut Vacation

XIX: A Rivalry Ends

A lump had been building in my throat. Now I was weeping uncontrollably. I threw myself into my lover’s arms.

“Oh, Sweetie,” I cried, hot tears burning my cheeks. “Isn’t that the saddest story you ever heard?”

BonBon stiffened visibly. Even his mustaches seemed to stand on end.

“Oops!” I said. “I mean—uh, Agent Fashionista Bandit, I’ve never heard such a woeful tale!”

BonBon was staring suspiciously at Sweetie.

“That name!” cried BonBon! “I know that name!”

“You mean Fashionista Bandit?” I asked hopefully.

“Non! Sweetie! That is a name on which I have sworn vengeance!” He relaxed a bit. “But I suppose there are many Sweeties in this wide world.”

“I’m sure there are LOTS and LOTS of Sweeties with Ph.D.s in donutology!” I said. “Oops again!”

BonBon’s mustaches were once again standing at attention. He glared at Sweetie. “Donutology! Your degree is in the pastry sciences? I find that more than coincidental!” His eyes narrowed. “And what was the topic of your dissertation?”

Before I could insert my foot even further into my mouth (I had planned to throw him off the scent by claiming Sweetie’s specialty was the much-maligned funnel cake), Sweetie said to BonBon, “I think you know the subject of my dissertation.”

“So it’s you!” BonBon exclaimed. “Do you realize what you have done?”

“I have revolutionized the world of confections,” said Sweetie, smugly.

“Yes, but at what cost?”

“True, the beignet is no longer at the apex of the dessert food chain,” said Sweetie, “but it’s still a noble pastry.”

“You really think so?” asked BonBon.

“I do. And you must remember, we both live in Republics. France no longer has a king. ”

“Yes!” cried BonBon. “Liberté! Equalité! Fraternité!”

“Countries where donuts and beignets can live side by side in harmony!” cried Sweetie.

“Yes!” said BonBon. “And so I do not need to kill you!” He looked with disgust at the beignet in his hands and hurled it down the hall. Sweetie’s hand dropped from the hilt of her katana. The beignet exploded.

BonBon rushed forward and embraced Sweetie, pressing her close. “We are,” he said, “fellow sojourners, leading the way for others in the culinary arts,” and he kissed her on both cheeks. And just like that, a bitter rivalry was at an end.

A Three-Donut Vacation: XVIII. BonBon's Story

Powdered Sugar Excesses Like This Led to the Breakup

Of the Beignet Separatist Movement

BonBon's Michelin's Fraternity House at Bundt University

Written 2-3 July, 2008

A Three-Donut Vacation

XVIII: BonBon’s Story

“But where does BonBon fit in?” I asked.

“I am your guide,” sniffed BonBon. “I am here to lead you to your objective.”

“Ladies,” said Mordecai, “Mssr. Bonbon, I take your leave. I have other deliveries. In fact, I have a most special delivery for my lovely wife Kacy.”

“Is it true UPS delivers three times a day?” asked Sweetie with seeming innocence.

“Only domestic,” grinned Mordecai, and just like that he was gone.

“You will follow me,” said BonBon. “but first I must tell you my story.”

“Do we have time?” I asked.

“But of course,” said BonBon.

“Besides, you’re in need of filler so you can spin things out while you figure out how to write yourself out of the plot hole you’ve gotten yourself into,” said Sweetie demurely.

“I’ll just write a timed lock onto the door we have to break into,” I said.

BonBon straightened his beret. “And now here’s my story. I am a scion of a prominent family. My clan has a long and proud tradition of rating the finest of food establishments. We write the fairest and least biased reviews in all of Europe.”

“Then your last name is…” I began.

“Michelin, of course” he said. “I was the oldest son, and great expectations were placed on me. I had always been interested in the pastry sciences, but it was at university that I discovered my passion—that miracle of wheat and yeast and sugar and hot oil, the beignet. Beignets consumed me. I could see nothing else. I could eat nothing else.

“And so, beignets became my life. I earned a Ph.D. in donopaleontology at Bundt University. My dissertation on beignet evolution was much applauded. I made the strongest of cases for the Theory of Imperial Pastry Selection.” BonBon stroked his mustaches. “I returned home in triumph. At Michelin, I was given the much sought-after position of Chief of Pastry Reviews. My life was good. I had a wife, two children, a comfortable position. And then it happened.

“Out of nowhere some, some, some American nobody named Sweetie published a paper on natural donut selection. Her reasoning was sublime, her ideas devastating to my career. I was ruined in academia. Soon my pastry reviews fell into disfavor with my father. And then one was rejected. Rejected!

“I went to my father in a fury. I pushed past his receptionist and burst into his office, and I saw it all. I saw the empty box on his desk, encrusted in dried sugar. I saw the crumbs on his bloated lips, which, as I raged at him, he wiped them again and again with a Krispy Kreme napkin.

“’How could you DO this?’ I shouted. ‘You have sold us out! And for what? For... for puffy American confections! Have you no respect for our culinary traditions?’

“I shamed him. He lowered his eyes and told me he was powerless over his addiction. ‘I meant to have only a small taste,’ he told me. ‘but I found myself wanting another and another. I now have a dozen a day habit. A baker’s dozen a day habit. How could I let you savage my beloved donuts?’ And then he grew angry. ‘One star, BonBon? A single star? One miserable star for such a delight of heaven? Compared to four stars for your accursed beignets? And worst of all, you have let an American make a fool of you. You are no son of mine!’

“And so I was cast out of my family. My wife left me and filed for divorce on the ground of irreconcileable pastry tastebud differences. I was not allowed to see my children lest I smuggle pastries to them. My life was ruined. Ruined!

“What choice had I? What choice did I have but to turn to the Beignet Separatist Movement? I went to them supplicant. I told them I would do anything they wanted. I would take the least rewarding, the most dangerous job. And so I was sent here, to the headquarters of the Krispy Kreme government, to work undercover, to sabotage the donuts. And sabotage I did.

“I took a position in the maintenance department; it gave me the opportunity to tinker with the hole punchers. Soon one in ten donuts was being made without a hole. Then one in seven!

“By now every Krispy Kreme donut in the world would have been but a beignet in disguise. But I was betrayed. The Beignet Separatist Movement, my adopted family, turned against itself. The movement separated into powdered sugar zealots and raspberry filling fanatics, and the in-fighting was bitter. They had no time for a lone patriot deep within the bowels of the Krispy Kreme establishment. My reports were not acknowledged. My stipend checks failed to arrive. The beignets they sent me, when they remembered to do so, were stale. Soon I had no money. I was a bitter man. I hated my university with its silly domed cakes. I hated my father for his weaknesses. And most of all I hated the American Sweetie, who had set me on my road to ruin. I swore if I ever found her I would make her rue the day she rejected the beignet in favor of the lesser pastries!

“At my lowest point I considered suicide by donut.

 “It would have been my statement to my family. ‘Michelin Heir Found Dead with Donuts.’ But at my blackest hour I received a message from Torley Linden. Would I help in the fight against the TSA? But of course I would. And so, here I am. My name is BonBon Michelin, mesdames, and I’m at your service!”

A Three-Donut Vacation: XVII. Intelligence Service Debriefing with Agent Sweetie

Written on 3 July, 2008

A Three-Donut Vacation

XVII: Intelligence Service Debriefing With Agent Sweetie

Dear reader: How this highly classified document managed to slip out of our super secret headquarters to be leaked to the press and generate fantastic publicity for us with no redactions except a few icing smears, we have no idea. We publish this excerpt out of sequence, as it contains material that explains the interaction between Sweetie and BonBon Michelin in upcoming episodes of this increasingly ever more bizarre story line.

Q: Now that we’ve accounted for all the bodies and we have your expense report for several thousand bullets, ninja throwing scones, a replacement katana, one wrecked Gaxis golf cart getaway vehicle, and ten designer gowns, let’s move on to intel on your co–conspirators—but first I have to ask you, Agent Sweetie, what was with the tension between you and BonBon Michelin? He really seemed steamed at you when you met in the Museum of Donut History.

A: Ha! Not so much steamed as half-baked, if you know what I mean. You see, it all goes back to our shared interest in the paleodonolithic sciences. Prehistoric donut history is a fascinating though controversial topic.

ProtoPastries! HA! Jurassic Frying Oil! Crullerbites! When I wrote my now famous* dissertation on the theory of pastry evolution (* now famous because I just mentioned it here in interview which I will leak to a famous blogger—oh, did I just say that out loud?) the idea of natural taste selection was considered radical by proponents of the accepted Theory of Imperial Selection—so called because it proposed the divine right of kings as the driving force behind pastry achievement. In their desperate battles for confectionary supremacy, royalty hired the best (meaning French, of course) pastry chefs. The need for survival in this donut-eat-donut world led to more and more specialized pastry achievements.

This theory seemed at first to have some merit, but it was flawed because self-interested backers could imagine no higher evolution of pastry than the beignet. The beignet was the center of the pastry universe, around which the lowly scones, crumpets, donuts, and muffins must orbit. To propose anything else was culinary heresy.

It’s rumored that when I won the Nobel Prize for outstanding achievement in the culinary sciences, consumption, and criticism, the major proponent of the original theory, one BonBon Michelin, a black sheep of the royalty gastronomic Michelin family of France, went quite stark raving mad. He lost his filling, so to speak, and ran off to join some insane beignet separatist movement, seeking redemption and archeological evidence to restore the beignet to the top of the pastry food chain.

Considering the smaller filling capacity of beignets—only 22cc’s of jelly as opposed to more than 60cc for the new American superdonut—the imperial selectionist theory lead to an evolutionary dead end. Darwinian donut theory proves every culture had its own standard for selection of the tastiest. Only extreme manipulation by a corporate overlord like Krispy Kreme can warp this natural taste selection process.

Q: Oh, Sweetie, I’m so fascinated! What are you studying now?

A: (Sweetie polishes her Nobel medal casually, then checks to make sure her outfit matches.) Well, for a while I’ve been fascinated by donut astronomics. Dark filling matter. Dry, arid scones: can they support jelly? Is the so-called donut hole really a donut, or should we call those diminutive pastries donutoids? The Big Rise theory. Of course, the discovery of binary muffins was a fascinating topic; I have some of my grad students working on that—but I have to say my favorite intellectual pursuit at the moment is the development of icing string theory.

A Three-Donut Vacation: XVI. Scone Wars

Top: Mark VII Throwing Scone

Bottom: Royal Crumpet and Jam Anti-Personnel Device

Written 2 July, 2008

A Three-Donut Vacation

XVI: Scone Wars

“The demoiselles sit in the shade and dream of framboise filling,” said Sweetie. “Who writes this dialogue? You’re late, BonBon!”

 “It could not be helped, Mme. Fashionista Bandit. I was not authorized to sign.”

Sweetie must have triggered her Mystitool, for suddenly the library was filled with harsh pink light. When my eyes adjusted (Sweetie keeps her light set to an intensity of 50 to stun her adversaries), I could make out two figures. One was short, with Daliesque mustaches. The other was my SL brother.

“Scaggs. Mordecai Scaggs,” he said in his best Sean Connery accent. “MI-99.”

“Mordecai!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here? You mean MI-6, right?”

“MI-99,” he said. “Special Virtual Division. I’m here on Her Majesty’s business. And Brown’s. Which is one and the same, since UPS was high bidder for the Crown.”

“You’re no longer the Queen’s Own Rakehell?” Sweetie said in amazement.

“I was forced out of the Rakehell division when I married,” Mordecai said. “It gave me an unacceptable air of respectability. Or so said all the other rakehells. Those pretenders!”

“Just a minute, said Sweetie. “Before we go any further with the boring background discussion, nice outfit, Mordecai!”

Mordecai did a turn to show off his virtual UPS uniform. “Kacy made it for me. It turned out so well we’ve started a line of Second Life clothing.”

“Oh!” Sweetie said. “We are soooo there!”

“So, can you sign for this package? Time is money.” Mordecai held out a clipboard.

“I’m confused,” I said, reading up the page to just before Sweetie’s clever twin derailments of the conversation. “Brown is the monarch?”

“Well, the Queen is still the titular head of the government,” said Mordecai, “but yes, for all practical purposes.”

“But why are you here?”

Sweetie sighed. “Honey, do you remember your last trip to the post office?”

I thought. “Yes. They asked me if I wanted cash back or donuts.”

“Same as on the planes,” Sweetie said. “No more peanuts; donuts instead.”

“Right,” said Mordecai. “The takeover of the U.S. government has given Krispy Kreme the means to distribute its disgusting sweet pastries for free.”

“Via the TSA and the post office,” I said.

“Indeed. And now they’re pressuring UPS to deliver their bloody* donuts free of charge. And so, in order to compete with the U.S. Postal Service, it has been decided: UPS must have a signature pastry.

“But which pastry would it be?” Mordecai continued. “Well, we have a surfeit of scones. They’re everywhere. We can’t eat them all ourselves—most of us don’t even like them— and we just can’t seem to move them on the international market. In fact, Greece responded with a major push of baklava. So we’re launching the Scone Initiative.”

“Scones?” I asked. “Those little British toothbreakers?”

“No, no!” said Mordecai. “You’re thinking of crumpets! Don’t get me started on the Crumpet Faction! They’ve been nothing but trouble. Scones—most of them, anyway—are triangular.”

“I’m even more confused,” I said. Why are you here at TSA secret headquarters? And why is Mssr. BonBon here?”

“If you’d just sign this receipt, you’d find out,” said Mordecai, holding out the clipboard once again. Sweetie grabbed it and signed.

“The Torley faction is in alliance with UPS,” she said. “And so Mordecai has brought us a box of scones.”

“In four flavors,” said Mordecai. “But no crumpets.”

 “But—dare I ask—” I said, “what we’re supposed to do with them?”

“These are special scones,” Mordecai said, “left over from the Falklands War.”

“We’re going to use them as weapons,” said Sweetie. “We need something that won’t show up on TSA’s metal detectors.”

“Right,” said Mordecai. “They’re hard as a rock, although passable to eat if you soak them in tea. These are English throwing scones. You use them like THIS!” And quick as a flash, a pastry was in his hand. He threw it. It spun like a boomerang, and, like a boomerang, it circled and returned to him. He caught it.

“They’ve been sharpened to a razor’s edge,” he said. “If I wasn’t wearing a special glove, that bommerangascone would have taken my fingers.”

-----

* My brother Mordecai does not actually use the epithet bloody. We’ve no idea why.

Know Your Enemy No. 4: The Donut Guy

Okay, So We Had to Take a Souvenir

A Three-Donut Vacation: XV. The Museum of Donut History

Donuts of the Paleozoic. These protopastries formed when the oceans were made of hot grease. They survive in sediment because there was no one to eat them.

Except maybe that amoeba toward bottom left.

Donut History: Stone donuts were often elaborately carved.

Cheyenne on a Paleolithic Donut

Written 26 June, 2008

A Three-Donut Vacation XV: The Museum of Donut History

We were in a filing room. But such a filing room! It was immense. There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of filing cabinets.

“Don’t these people digitize?” I whispered.

“This is the back entrance,” Sweetie said..

“To what?”

“To the Museum of Donut History.”

“I didn’t realize donuts had a history.”

“Of course they do.” Sweetie had led us to a door, and now she threw it open. “Look!”

-----

Our contact was late.

We had no choice but to wait. While we did, we learned a great deal about donut history. We walked through displays of famous donuts of history (“Look! The stone donut!” Sweetie exclaimed), donut publicists of the 18th and 19th Centuries, The Cruller Rebellion, Pastries of the Fin de Siecle. We read about the muffin controversy, the ongoing battles with bagel fanatics, and the Beignet Separatist movement.

Sweetie was particularly interested in the Beignet Brigade, which considered punched donut holes a sacrilege. “Mon Dieu!” one member was said to have exclaimed. “If God had meant donuts to have voids, He would not have given us our wonderfully hollow beignets!”

-----

“Bonjour,” said a voice to our right. “The beignet trees line the Seine. Do you have the countersign?”

A Three-Donut Vacation. XIV: A Wholly-Owned Subsidiary

Written 26 June, 2008

A Three-Donut Vacation

XIV: A Wholly-Owned Subsidiary

“Oh, my god!” I said. “They’ve sold THAT many donuts?”

“It was the administration’s failed economic policies that led to the buyout,” she said. “When was the last time you got peanuts on a commercial teleport?”

“Come to think of it, last time out on Delta I was offered the choice of a cruller or a chocolate glazed,” I said. “And the only drink available was milk.”

“Exactly,” said Sweetie.

The doorways were endless:

Donut Statistics
Grease Testing
Pastry Ballistics
Bureau of Plausible Deniability: Chocolate Division
Exotic Spices Bioresearch
Cruller Dunking Facility
Center for Yeast Studies and Edged Weapons
Headquarters, Donuts-As-Tools-of-Assassination Test Group (Human Volunteers Needed)

Sweetie stopped abruptly. “This is our first stop.” She produced her plastic card key and passed it through a scanner. A door slid noiselessly open.