A Pharmacological Dilemma

Hal's mother just stood there, looking a lot like a naked woman who was off her badly-needed medication.

"OK, so what did the doctor say?" asked Thyd eventually, since, obviously, someone needed to.

"He said to make sure to keep it out of reach of children, theives, kings, and anyone else not suffering from Crazy Old Woman Syndrome," replied Hal, rather grimly. "Or the consequences could be--" he paused dramatically "--disastrous!"

"Hey," sniffed Hal's mother. "Who you callin' old? I'm only forty-nine! Whack him!" She appeared to be directing this last command, not to the monkey, but to an invisible person somewhere off to her left. The monkey complied anyway.

"Ow!" yelled Hal.

"You know," said Denia, "this is nice and all, this family reunion stuff." Her tone of voice implied that she was not finding it anything remotely like "nice." "But we've got a mission to accomplish, remember?"

"You don't understand!" wailed Hal, still clutching his arm where the monkey had hit him. "If the king's taking my mother's meds, this whole country is in deep manure! We've got to go and, well, steal them from him. Or who knows what sort of insane things he'll do! Besides, my mother needs her pills back. She'll ruin her reputation, cavorting around naked like that."

"You know," said Thyd, "this is what comes of relying on chemicals instead of making use of the power of positive thinking."

"Oh, shut up, Thyd," said all the other party members at once. "What are we going to do?" asked Wayland reasonably.

1. They eventually all agree that this development is even more important than their original mission, and proceed to get completely sidetracked.
2. They decide that their mission is more important, and they can deal with the king's drug problems later.
3. They decide to split up (they can do more damage that way!).
4. They utterly fail to come to any sort of decision. Eventually, the sun sets.

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