The fountain of Geneva (5) --- "Infinite Jest"

John and Alex, our friends from the Green Eyes, are being told the back story of the Fountain of Geneva, the most phallic object on the planet (in a liquid sense). Hadrian, the visiting Roman emperor (117-138 AD), had to help the Swiss locals deal with a ravaging Nordic tribe, the Muttoni. And he did so, apparently. Richard Zugabe, librarian of the city archives of Geneva, explains how (his last sentence was: "Nothing was ever heard of the Muttoni again.")

Part V --- "Infinite Jest"

There is a silence. “Cool,” Alex says. “You are going to elaborate?”
“I will try.”

“They got OD’d on this Megalo-wine,” I say, “they had no tolerance for the stuff.”
“Right, that would be hypothesis number one. It had been my working hypothesis until I discovered yet another document in the archives with an imperial order issued on the fifth of September of the same year, sending a platoon of Army Engineers across the Passo di Monte Moro into the Saas valley.

Saas valley, including Lake Mattmark, seen from the Passo di Monte Moro

“Hadrian had been given a tour of the place, so you can assume that he was shown Lake Mattmark, a pearl of a mountain lake sitting right above the grounds of the Muttoni settlement.”
“Above the grounds? Above?”

___________________

The ice barrier would collapse and the water would gush down the valley and destroy everything in its path. 

___________________

The Term Resurrectors of Trayas (Maud)

We met Maud in the street the other day, and she, normally a serene neighbor with a charmingly stand-offish approach to local gossip, she was all-aflutter.

"Michael," she says, "I have something for your. I've seen the light! Have you ever been a member of the Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts?"
"Yes," I say.
"And?"
"Well, I got evicted."
"By Avril Mondragon?"
"How do you know?"
"Never mind," she says, "but we're getting the band back together again. There's a new society. The Term Resurrectors of Trayas."
"The what?"
"The Term Resurrectors of Trayas. Let me explain. Or better, let me not explain. A picture says a thousand words."

(She shows me this picture:)

"Queer"

"Here, she says, "queer" resurrected. Queer!"