rayaso

Wheel of Chaos 2025
Week 9
Prompt: Edgelord
September 11, 2025

OFF THE PAGE

Grumlek Stenfang prided himself on the edginess of his life.  He was a keen observer of society and he always knew what was cool and what was not – the barely-known bands, the obscure movies, the latest internet slang, the hot new coffee shops in downscale neighborhoods.  Popular music was dreck, something for your parents.  If you didn’t know about the Screaming Squash, your life wasn’t worth living.  The Squash was a no-hit band from the 80s who single-handedly invented veggie rock.  They were the latest darlings of the terminally cool, at least for this week.

Edginess was a constantly moving line separating people worth knowing from those who were best ignored.  “If you worry about being cool, you’re not,” Grumlek once said in an interview on a podcast so cool it didn’t even have a name.

But Grumlek was more than just cool.  He was an accomplished origami creator, known not only for his straight edges but also the simplicity of his tiny designs.

Truly, he was a lord of edges.  He was also a troll – and not just any troll.  He was a paper troll.

“It all comes from my origins,” he once said.  “After all, I’m a two-dimensional drawing of a troll who escaped from a fairy tale -- I’m nothing but edges.”

Grumlek taking time off from “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” to invent golf.

Life was not easy for a two-dimensional troll living in a 3-D world.  He was liberated from the pages of “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” in which a troll princess tries to keep the hero as her captive husband.  Kidnapping is a common marital strategy among trolls, because even trolls don’t want to marry trolls unless they’re forced to.

Grumlek had a minor role in the story, but it was enough to catch the eye of Timmy Arbuckle, a five-year-old with a penchant for cutting things up with scissors.  One day, Timmy tried to give his little sister a haircut.  For his tonsorial efforts, he was banished to his room.  Unfortunately, he took his scissors with him and freed Grumlek from the drawings for “East of the Sun,” which his father had sadly left behind after last night’s bedtime story.

The drawings were so vibrant that Grumlek sprang to life and immediately ran away.  With Timmy in the house, he knew what would happen if he stayed.

Life was difficult at first.  After all, he was only two inches tall, made of paper, and he had part of the text for “East of the Sun” on his back.  But he was a troll and he persevered after the manner of all trolls.

Grumlek was unfortunately at the whim of every breeze, wind, or gust, which blew him everywhere.  In the course of his unintended travels, he got to see the human race from his different perspective.  He was rarely impressed.

One day he was blown into the office of the Gazette Tribune.  The building provided a hideaway, safe from being stepped on or blown away.  A week later, a janitor tried to sweep him up as just another bit of trash.  That’s when Grumlek discovered his voice.

“Stop that!” he yelled, to the surprise of both Grumlek and the janitor, who had never heard a piece of paper talk before, especially one with the squeaky voice of a two-inch troll.

The janitor took a swig from his hip flask, then drank some more for good luck.  He got down on his knees to face Grumlek.

“What the ##!@@ are you?” he asked.

“A troll,” Grumlek replied, who then told him his story.

The janitor knew he was out of his depth, so he picked up Grumlek and put him on a stack of papers in Rose Wisneski’s in-box, with a note that said “Talk to me.”

Rose wrote the “Now!” column, which covered local soft items, like restaurant openings, movie reviews, local culture, and anything deemed not to be real news.  Rose and her column were well-liked and well-written, leading to a Herb Caen Award for Non-Specific Journalism for her article “Why an Apple?”  A two-inch talking paper troll was a dream story for her.

“So, why should I talk to you?” asked Rose.  “You’re scrap paper.”

“Beats me,” said Grumlek, who was feeling grumpy, the usual mood for trolls.  “Why should I talk to you?”

Once she got over her surprise, Rose recognized that she had a good story, maybe even a great one, about a totally new life form: paper.  She loved the weird intersections of human interest and science, and this had Pulitzer written all over it.

“Because we can help each other,” Rose replied.  “Tell me your story and I’ll make you famous.”

As a troll, Grumlek didn’t care about being famous.  He couldn’t eat it or spend it, so why bother?

Still, he had once been part of a story, and he had a voice.

“Why not tell her?” he thought.  “Maybe I can get something out of it.”

After all, trolls are greedy and grasping, and Grumlek was a troll.

So, he talked.  And talked.  And then talked some more.

“Once upon a time, there was a book, a little boy, and a pair of scissors,” he began.

He talked about life as a tiny paper troll, some of which was true.  Since he started as a fictional character, he lacked a firm grasp on the truth, but he knew how to spin a story.  Rose bought it all.  Besides his grim start in life, there were stolen babies, talking puppets, glass shoes, and battles with mice kings.

There were also comments about the people he had seen, their desperate desire to belong, and the lengths they would go to be kjekt, which Rose said was Norwegian for “cool.”

"I’m cool,” she said by way of explanation.

“I didn’t know that shopping at Sears was cool,” replied Grumlek, with a giggle.

And that started his career as a pundit on the human social scene from his trollish point of view.  He would talk and then Rose would write.  Her column was soon carried nationally, she got a blog, and there were occasional television appearances.

But Grumlek wanted none of this.  No self-respecting troll would.  Trolls work and they work hard.  It’s what they do, and this just wasn’t troll work.  Talking with Rose was fun, and if she’d been a troll, he might have kidnapped her and started a family.  But he needed real work.

“What can you do?” Rose asked when Grumlek told her he needed a job.

“Trolls are good at guarding treasures and castles and smashing things,” he said.  “Some like to eat people, but I’m not that kind of troll – I don’t have a stomach.  Some trolls live under bridges and collect tolls.”

“Let me make some calls,” said Rose.

Within a few days, Grumlek had a job as an automated bridge toll attendant.  He didn’t have to do anything, just watch the cars go by.  This was perfect for a piece of paper.  To keep him from being blown away, every morning a co-worker taped him to the booth’s window, and took him down when his shift was over.

Since the bridge was close to Rose’s office, he decided to live in her filing cabinet, in a folder under “T.”  The paper’s cartoonist drew a cave and a bridge on the inner sides of the folder to make Grumlek feel at home.

One day when he was talking to Rose for a column, he noticed something new on her desk.

“What’s that?”

“An origami swan -- I make them when I’m stressed,” she said.

Grumlek was entranced by the beauty of it.

“But I’m not stressed,” he thought, “just bored.”

As a piece of paper, the idea of making things out of another sheet of paper appealed to him, so he took up origami.  Trolls have very nimble hands, and soon he was an expert at making all sorts of animals, real or imaginary, out of bits of paper.  He loved to make trolls.  In the back of his mind, he hoped that one would come to life.  Rose was a great friend, but he was still lonely.  There was no one like him to talk to, or, hopefully, kidnap.  Despite what the stories tell us, trolls are very sociable and like to live in small tribes.

Deep in their hearts, all trolls have a yearning for northern Europe, their homeland.  Grumlek’s problem was that he came from a book.  He didn’t know anything about trolls except for fairy tales.  One day, Rose wrote a humorous column on the origins of trolls which mentioned Norway, their ancestral home.

Grumlek knew what he wanted to do, but he was happy with Rose, the bridge, and origami.  He pushed thoughts of Norway to the side.  But then one day, the inevitable happened.  Rose retired.  This was upsetting to her many fans, but most of all to Grumlek.

“You can come live with me,” she told Grumlek one day.  But both knew it wouldn’t be the same.  “Just think about it,” she added, but she knew what Grumlek wanted.

After Rose’s retirement party, she had to clear out her files, including the “T’s.”

“It’s time,” she said.

She took an envelope and addressed it to the Troll Sanctuary in Norway.  Grumlek crawled inside, and then Rose put it in the outgoing mail.

Ten days later, Grumlek arrived at the Troll Sanctuary.  An administrator opened the envelope and he stepped out.  The air was crisp and cold, and everywhere there were trees, rivers, rocks, and snow.  And there were trolls.  Lots of them, and all in three dimensions.  This was truly the troll homeland, and he knew he belonged.  He could feel his lungs expanding for the first time.  And his body started to grow until he too became 3-D.  He was no longer a paper troll.

“Home at last,” Grumlek thought as he was greeted by several trolls.

Rose was home as well.  Even in retirement, she continued to write, finally winning a Pulitzer Prize for her children’s stories featuring a cool paper troll.

Little Timmy kept using his scissors and grew up to be a tailor on Saville Row.

Most of them lived happily ever after.

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The drawing of Grumlek is by Arvid Kristoffersen, a fairy tale illustrator whose drawings are inspired by cultures with a deep tradition of troll stories, including Norway (where he was born) and Montana (where he lives).  This did not result in any cowboy trolls that I could find.  That level of kitsch would clearly be uncool.  A golfing troll is enough.

Wheel of Chaos 2025
Week 4
July 20, 2025
"Figure of speech"

FAILURE
The Life and Times of William Grover

One of Professor William Grover’s heroes, Robert F. Kennedy, memorably said that “only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” Of course, he was killed, which was the greatest failure of all.  By this standard, Prof. Grover should have experienced the height of success.  In the world of science, his failures were legendary and the mere mention of his name was a shortcut to snickers.

There was, of course, the time he announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle, the Grovertron.  No one could duplicate his results, and it turned out to be an April Fool’s joke by one of his graduate students.  Prof. Grover was a forgiving man, and he turned his attention to creating an AI program that would understand and create humor.  The result was so boring that he received his only award: an Ig-Nobel Prize.

And then there was the time he might or might not have killed the family cat trying to solve the Schrödinger’s Cat paradox.  This probably scarred his children for life.

His greatest failure was time travel.  He thought that “Back to the Future” was a documentary and he tried to create a flux capacitor, which, as everyone knows, is what makes time travel possible.

Hudson University, the befuddled professor’s employer, had finally had enough, and Provost Nicholson summoned him to her office.

“Bill,” she said, “I’m afraid you’ve reached the end of the line here.  You’re diluting our brand and we’re hemorrhaging money.  You’ve got six months to finish your current research and find something that justifies your position here.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Prof. Grover, “and I appreciate the six months.  However, I’m working on something spectacular, the Phoenix Project, and it will change your mind.”

“I certainly hope so,” said Provost Nicholson, who was relieved things had gone so well.  The usual response to these meetings was anger, threats of lawyers, and begging.  But one thing Prof. Grover was good at was accepting failure.  Practice did make perfect.

Of course, there was no Phoenix Project.

Prof. Grover didn’t do what any reasonable person would do.  He did not think about whether he should even be a scientist, nor did he go to the lab and get to work on creating a Phoenix Project.  Instead, he went home and started streaming episodes of “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon,” a truly awful space opera which was cancelled after its first season, to the disappointment of no one—not even Prof. Grover, who dragged it out now as an emotional pacifier, because no matter how bad his life was, it was still better than “Sanctuary Moon.”

Prof. Grover became inert for the next several weeks.  He ate, slept, and interacted with his family, but little else.  Future chroniclers of this part of his life would kindly refer to this as his chrysalis stage.

His main thought during this time was the wish to be something else.  Anything else.  He spent a lot of time wondering what it would be like to be a lamp.  But then it finally happened – the light bulb turned on.

“I’m going to build a transmogrifier!” he told his long-suffering wife.  “It will turn me into anything I want.”  What his wife wanted is not recorded.

The transmogrifier was not a new idea.  It had first been proposed by Prof. Calvin as a thought experiment, but no one had tried to build one.  A transmogrifier was simply a box, with lots of dials and wires.  You could program it to change yourself into anything.  All you had to do was set the output, enter the box, close the hatch, and re-emerge as your idea.

Prof. Grover was not discouraged by all his other failures.  He was drawn to failure like a moth to a flame.

He knew he would need two things: space and power.  The transmogrifier would be big and need a lot of power, which Hudson University was unlikely to grant.  Prof. Grover arranged for his family to spend the summer with relatives at a lake, which freed up the space.  While he was a good husband and father, he was on a mission that would require his total concentration.  And his chronicler would not have to come up with any dialog, which was critical when facing a looming deadline.

Power was less easily solved.  All the power in his house would not be nearly enough.  He almost despaired, until he thought of the flux capacitor back in the lab.  It might not have propelled him into the future, but it generated more than enough power for the transmogrifier.

Prof. Grover planned to build the transmogrifier in the guest bedroom, with the closet as the transmogrifier chamber.  Now he needed all the wires and gauges.  This was the critical and most perplexing part – how to make it work.

It took weeks of thinking and rewatching “Sanctuary Moon” before he hit on a solution.  He would use the Schrödinger’s box, just on a much bigger scale.  And without the death possibility.  Relying on the uncertainly principle was certainly daring.  He couldn’t know what would come out of the transmogrifier chamber, if anything.  Prof. Grover had never been daring before and he had always failed.  Maybe now was the time to achieve greatness.

So, he built and he tinkered and he tinkered and he built, and finally it was done.  He had a room full of wires, gauges, and lots of what-nots, and at its heart glowed the flux capacitor.  There had been problems along the way, but that was to be expected when working at the ridiculous edge of the possible.

All he needed was a test subject.  His family had wisely taken Kitty 2.0 with them, fearing another heartbreak.  That left the professor himself.  As a scientist, he was against the use of humans in experiments, but he had no choice.  He would have to risk everything.

But what to become?  The machine was set to “temporary” so that after an hour, he would hopefully revert to his human form.  There had been a lot of monsters on “Sanctuary Moon.”  He had also been watching the documentary “Jurassic Park” and had been impressed with the stegosaurus, so he envisioned a fire-breathing, gigantic stegomonster, complete with a thagomizer tail.  And, being human, he would pay a visit to Hudson University for some fun.  His greatest triumph would be the university’s greatest failure.

“This is it,” he thought, “ultimate success or ultimate failure.”

He set all the dials and threw all the switched.  He turned the flux capacitor up to 11.  He put his hand on the transmogrifier’s doorknob.  And hesitated.

“What if it doesn’t work?”

He thought of all his humiliating failures and started to back away.

“If I don’t go in, no one will ever know.  But I’ll always be a joke.”

That was too much.  He stepped in, closed the door, and hit “start.”

The circuitry hummed louder and louder.  The chamber began to shake.  The lights went out and he felt nothing.  When he opened his eyes, he was on his front lawn.  He swished his tail and knocked over a lamp post.  He looked behind himself, and there it was – a huge thagomizer!  It worked!  He was a stegomonster!

He stepped on his neighbor’s car and headed for Hudson University, spewing flames as he went.  Success felt glorious.  He smashed with his thagomizer and roared.  It was right out of Episode 4 of “Sanctuary Moon.”

For the next half hour, Hudson University was his playground.  Suddenly, things went black again.  When he opened his eyes, it was as William Grover, scientist.  Everyone was looking for the stegomonster, not a middle-aged professor.

He looked at what he had done and was ashamed.  Vengeance was bitter.

“Failed again,” he thought to himself.  “I should never have started the Phoenix Project.”

Amidst the ruins, Prof. Grover found a stunned Provost Nicholson and resigned immediately.

By the time his family returned, there was no sign of the transmogrifier.  Kitty 2.0 felt safe.

William is still looking for a new job.  It is hard to find work when your greatest accomplishments are failures.  He took comfort in his family, his one success.

He gave up trying to find success and felt better for it.  William knew that in the end, he had achieved greatly, because through it all, he had never given up.  And he’d had a thagomizer.

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"The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon" is a fictional space opera in the "Murderbot" Netflix series.  In the Murderbot world, it was not cancelled and had at least 397 series.

The original transmogrifier from "Calvin and Hobbes."

The flux capacitor from “Back to the Future.”

The original thagomizer, from Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons.


Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment where a cat in a box can be both alive and dead at the same time until someone opens the box. It shows how weird quantum physics can be. The idea is that tiny particles can exist in multiple states at once—called "superposition"—until they are observed.  This does not give any credit to the cat, who certainly knows if it is alive or not.