[baudrunner]

"How free a will is it if we are granted it, as the story goes?"

The baudrunner draws a quantum of brew from the bottomless bottle. The go-between-waitress casts a wary glance at his eyes as she shifts deliberately from her perch on his thigh.

"You're not going to get all philosophical on me, are you?"

They have played this game before. But she and the others know that it is better not to wonder too quickly at the intent of what he says lest the wizened fool within his heart finds the vulnerable spot within theirs, but that it is better to read into the content and determine thereafter whether it be fit to laugh or toast the poet.

"Is the pop-up not a transgression against my will if I will it otherwise? Are not the spies and covert data snatchers in this cyber world a transgression against my will? For who would want their bandwidth hijacked if they are only permitted so much of it? Should I not have the free will to decide to revoke that permission that was so cleverly wheadled out of me when I was innocent?"

With that the go-between-waitress slides off the baudrunner's knee and lifts her tray away as she saunters off. "I really don't know what you're on about! Let me know if you need another." Indeed, another bottomless bottle in a bottomless world.

The baudrunner peers with curious bewilderment at the gnu exiting from the men's room. "How does he wash his hands," he muses, then back to the pattern on the carpet.

"Oh woe, I have a need for speed, and the pace of things does not satisfy me." Then, "..yet I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labotamy."