Pub Crawl: A nice, safe place ...

[mandahr]

As the others were discussing Craig's unfortunate fate, Mandahr ambled over to Gladys and said, "Sorry about the door, Gladys but I saw the closed sign and since the rest read like an IBM 1130 manual, I naturally ignored it (we techies never RT_M) and entered the... um... way I know how."

"Did you know that almost every laptop injury either directly or indirectly
relates to a drop?" Mandahr said to no one in particular as he ambled over to the pile of twisted plastic. "If I can remove the hard drive and
transfer it to one of my instant Kodak throw-away laptops, I can access my wireless network and transfer all of the information to my external hard drive. I can then populate a new state-of-the-art 'Farmer in the DELL' laptop for Selene to use."

Luck and persistance were with Mandahr as he quickly produced a new enhanced laptop for Selene.

"When you turn on your laptop, there will be an icon on the desktop that you will want to click with your mouse. You must be directly on line with your infrared port or the program will not work. If all goes well and my code is free of bugs (obviousely not Microsoft) you will shed your orangey hue and once again become the lovely person you used to be." Mandahr said to Selene.

"I'll be off now," but everyone at the Duck knew he was born off, "and don't forget to call on the Rhino for all of your bits and bytes needs. Sorry, Crow, I can't help you with the type of bite you had in your note."

Mandahr shook the remains of the Duck door from his horn and trotted off into the sunrise.

[Underground River]

Green Druid stared around at everybody and said "Where is Alferian? We need him or our dear fencepost to put this chaos into some sort of order. I am so confused, my brain feels like a...never mind..."
Green Druid

[Ruthie]

Moon Cloud was still engaged in a heated argument with the images on the broken laptop screen.
"I don't care what you think he did to you, you're stuck in your two dimensional reality, so tough nuts!"
Just then two very large walnuts appeared on the broken screen and landed with a "bonk! bonk!" sound on the Queen of Hearts' head.
"OOH! come look at this everybody," she cried, and then said "steaming heaps of manure," and sure enough, guess what appeared on the screen, surrounding the Queen?
Well, there was one word which NOBODY should have said, but Gladys, so happy to have her patrons back, had done something with a few scraps she scraped off the back fence, and asked:
"MUSHROOM BURGERS, ANYONE?"
The Queen of Hearts eyes grew slim, her lips smirked all up to one side, and she grabbed a falling burger, and bit it.

[Ruthie]

But, unfortunately, it wasn't a Portobello Mushroom, so the Queed just got some of that ermm, gravy, all over her face, and Mandahr trotted back in, speared the screen-Queen with his mighty Horn, and trotted out again,
and the pubsters continued with their merry-making.
Meanwhile, Branbeith negotiated for a corner of the 'Duck in which to host her "Bird to Birch in Three Magic Words" classes, open to all animals, flight-capable or not, and also to all plants, tree or not. Gladys protested at the sign "proudly brought to you by Bits and Bytes", but she said that Branbeith could use her sign, if it pointed toward the wall.
Branbeith, ever-so cleverly realized the main bar of the Duck had four walls, so if only she wasn't hanging her banner in the corner, it would always point toward a wall. Stillpoint collapsed from nervous exhaustion, because of how the word "point" flew across the room, Underground River started some lessons on "rivers that can now flow uphill" Moon cloud began jingle-bell lessons, and Gladys made such a profit of all the students of the classes, that she completed all the required repairs in time for the next inspection, and the special beer barrels were temporarily used to hold up a table, which Puk had eventually managed to turn into, although remembering only one leg of the original three he had as a barstool.
Carragh sat in the corner, happy as a clam, because her new island home was closeby to the blessed tress-drenching sea, Selene took some classes, and thanks to Branbeith's teachings can now shift from pumpkin to Himalayan cat at will. Craig ran off in fear of losing his other thumb, so Beith's top-up spell was hastily completed, and Crow took off with Billy Joe Bob, LMC, Moon and Storm back to the Ranch in Texas. Kat Lady adopted Rosebud, and they, along with Kat-Storm, Spaz and Rancid soon brought the health inspector back to our beloved 'Duck. None, however, intruded upon the special inglenook in which sat Alferian, Azrienoch, and Wanderful, and Winky.
Time for a pint of Fitheach Dubh!

[Crow]

And on the door was a sign ...

The Foggy Duck -- OPEN FOR BUSINESS
The Health Office

Thanks to all participants for their efforts in bringing this story to another happy ending. And special honors to Moon Cloud for her efforts in wrapping things up! Here's to all of you --