33
I SPENT SOME TIME feeling sorry for myself. I had no Miss Rheingold, no Ariane, no intriguing science project to give my life direction and meaning. I told myself that I shouldn’t regret the loss of Ariane because she certainly was increasing the value of my stock in Porky’s venture even if she wasn’t enriching my afternoons, but I couldn’t find any compensation at all for the loss of Miss Rheingold and the science project. What good was the Big Money without the Big Questions? The project had filled my time for so long that without it I hardly knew what to do with myself. Rambling through the encyclopedia seemed entirely purposeless with no science report to write, so I wandered there less and less. I had nothing better to do now, so I gave in to Raskol and Marvin’s urging and began working with them to rebuild the watchtower.
In our absence, of course, the bamboo had overgrown the site we’d cleared, so we had to begin by hacking it back. The three of us had been hacking at it for a while when Guppa suddenly burst into the little clearing we’d made.
“We’re on!” he said.
“On?” I said.
“We’re going to be on ‘Fantastic Contraptions.’” He handed a letter to me. It was true. He and Mrs. Jones had been chosen “from literally thousands of applicants” the letter said.
“This is great!” I said.
“We urge you,” the letter went on, “not to confuse appearing on the show with winning. There can be only one winner each program, and the audience alone determines which inventor that is.”
I read that part, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. Of course, I confused being on the show with winning.
[to be continued]
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🎧 635: I spent . . .