How I came to write Pim
People often ask how I came to write Pim. It seems like a thousand years since I discovered Pim, or that Pim
discovered me. Thankfully I kept detailed notes and saved photos from that time. While I can’t swear to the
absolute accuracy of what you are about to read, I have done my best to capture the essence of how Pim entered my life.
The meeting with his colleague having ended in irreconcilable differences, Clive left abruptly to find Brad and the money he’d entrusted to Brad. Clive’s mood declined further when he questioned Pim and Bim, who had sealed themselves in jars moments before his arrival.
Busy though she was with cookie sales, Ukifune lingered at a clothing rack that stood in her path, making a deduction that she would later submit for her Ratiocination Badge. And then continued on her way.
Never fully at ease in formalwear, Brad had left his suit in a lump in the desert. When at last he extricated himself from the aesthetic effusions of the Well-Dressed Albatross he returned to hang it carefully on a rack.
Mr. Starbuck convinced Brad to trade his chips for a splendid artwork from the Starbuck family collection. The Well-Dressed Albatross was much taken with the acquisition (champion of English painting that we know him to be.)
For hours Brad pushed his barrow of untranslated wealth under constellations that might have guided him had he chosen to study navigation rather than Hungarian. By chance Mr. Starbuck fell in behind Brad with the tentative idea of offering some investment tips.
Departing the casino with his winnings Brad quickly became lost in a foreboding landscape. Clive was nowhere to be found, as he’d retreated to a Thai Restaurant, with a peer, in order to discuss possible resolutions to the Goldbach Conjecture.
By a fluke that defied all laws of probability Brad won the hand and bankrupted the house. The casino’s employees fled the disaster. As did Millicent, righteously indignant at an industry that would exploit so pernicious a vice.
Brad forgot Clive’s instructions but had a good feeling about his hand and staked everything on it. The croupier—actually an undercover agent in pursuit of Mr. Starbuck—was familiar to Brad.
After several days of instructing Brad in probability theory and making sure he was properly dressed, Clive armed Brad with 5,000,000 pesos and sent him into the field.
Having developed a system that made him undefeatable at Texas Hold’Em, Clive had been banned from every casino in Vegas. A chance meeting presented him with a way back into the game, by proxy.
