Man in a Jar
By Oren the Otter

	Zech Rabin sat in the overstuffed recliner staring out into space.  His
features were fixed in an expression of deep contemplation.  At last, he
lowered his gaze to the toy cat resting atop the fireplace.  "I have it."
he said.  "The scene with two horses being buried in a Winebago is from a
novelette by none other than J T Martentaur."
	"Very good." said the cat.  "Your turn."
	"All right.  A woman is transformed into a rabbit by a magic imbued muff."
	"Please." said the cat.  "That was our very own Oren who penned that one.
It's called `Tears of Grief'."
	Zech downed the last of his coffee.  "It is a delight to match wits with
one so intelligent as you, Tom." he said.  "But I must end our game.
Important work awaits me at home.  Besides, Ruth has been feeling ignored
enough as it is."
	"Very well." said Tom.  "Do come back soon."
	Zech rose from the chair, a feat he struggled to accomplish, even with his
unique garments.  You see, Zech could not stand on his own.  Most of his
strength came from the neuro-muscular network of pufflin fibers within his
clothing.  They responded to the nerve impulses from his body, moving him
about just as his own muscles would, but nonetheless, he trembled as he
walked through the door of the coffee house.
	Zech hadn't been coming here for very long.  He's not what you would call
one of the regulars here at Joe's coffee house.  But we did our best to
make him feel welcome, and he soon charmed us with his wit and intellect.
Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that he was doing more than simply
socializing.  I kept getting the feeling that we were being studied.
	Jesse, too, seemed to notice this.  Most people, upon seeing Jesse, want
to know why a flesh and blood kangaroo is wearing an enormous set of plush
wings on his back.  Zech, however, was far more interested in the effect
the pufflin in his wings had on his intelligence once it had combined with
his own nervous system.
	Pufflin, of course, seems to defy analysis.  That's the nature of the
alien fiber.  What it is and what it does depends entirely on how you treat
it.  In Zech's case, it was a second set of muscles.  In Jesse's case, it
was like a second brain.  To folks like Tom, it was their very life and
existence.  Tom is a plushie.
.....
	Zech's wife, Ruth, was waiting for him by the door.  She kissed him as he
came in, but he gave her no more than a cursory "Hello" and headed back
toward his study.
	"I made your favorite tonight, Zech." said Ruth.  Broiled lamb."
	"Not tonight." said Zech, not looking back.  "I have much to do."
	Ruth watched her husband disappear into his private study, and quietly cried.
	Zech took a sizable jar down off of the shelf.  "There you are, my little
memory bank." he said as he studied the substance inside.  The jar was
filled with white, cottony pufflin.  "Tonight, I shall go even further back
into my past, and review my senior year in high school.
	For hours, Zech sat and stared at his jar and thought.  He concentrated
intensely on remembering his life clearly enough that the thoughts became
imbedded in the fibers before him.
	"You are my immortality." he mumbled.  "You will help me to outlive my
ghastly condition and... and..."
	Zech rose from his chair.  He couldn't breathe!  A horrible, squeezing
pain flowed through his chest and down his left arm.  "Ruth?" he called.
"Ruth!  Ruth, help me!"
	Ruth was too late in answering.  She found her husband on the floor, dead
from a heart attack.
.....
	Although none of us from Joe's coffee house really knew Zech that well, we
did our best to comfort our new friend's widow.  She handled his death very
well, having known for a long time that she would soon lose him.  In fact,
she had been losing him for a long time as he spent more and more time
locked away in his study.
	She appreciated our efforts and even asked Marco, Leroy and I to come over
for tea one Sunday afternoon.
	"I confess I did have an ulterior motive for asking you over here." Ruth
told us.  "I do miss Zech terribly, but the time has come for me to get on
with my life.  I need to clean his things out of the house, and I cannot do
it by myself.  I was wondering if you would be willing to help me.
	"We would be pleased to help you." I said for the three of us.  Leeroy
nodded.  Marco sort of glared at me.
	We began in the study, taking all of Zech's books and files and software
and stuffing them away into boxes.  The furniture we left alone, save for
giving it a good dusting and moving it around so that it did not remind
Ruth of her late husband.
	The Leeroy found the jar.  "What is this?" he asked.
	"I have no idea, but it seemed to have some special importance to Zech.
	"Is it pufflin?" I asked.
	"No," said the rabbit.  "Pufflin is stringier.  I'm pretty sure it's
cotton or polyester."
	"I understand you sew.  You may have it if you like."
	"Thank you, Mrs. Rabin."  Said Leeroy.  We got back to work once again,
and later that evening, Leeroy began a project of his own.
.....
	"This is for you." said Leeroy the rabbit as he handed Ruth a little
stuffed zebra tied in a bright red ribbon and bow.  "How did you know I
like zebras?"
	"I saw the statuettes in your living room the other day at tea time.
Also, Zech mentioned it a lot.  He spoke often about you."
	Ruth became teary at that.
	"I'm... I'm sorry Mrs. Rabin... I..."
	"It's all right, Leeroy.  It's not your fault.  It's just that Zech was so
distant before he died, I wondered if he ever thought of me at all."
	"Well he certainly thought of you around us, and you can be sure that we
are thinking of you now."
	Ruth examined the zebra.  "Did you fill this with the stuff in that jar I
gave you?"
	"Yeah.  I overestimated how much there was, though.  That's why he's kind
of floppy."
	Ruth set the toy down on the table and hugged Leeroy.  "Thank you so much
for caring." she said.  "I can't tell you how much this means to me."
	The eyes of the zebra glimmered with just a hint of sadness.
.....
	"Ruth!  Ruth!"
	Widow Rabin emerged from her bedroom to find out who was calling her name.
 She found the zebra floundering on the tabletop, blind and helpless.
	"Oh my!  You're one of the living ones!"
	"Ruth, where am I?  I can't see!"
	"Calm down now.  You've just come to life.  Your eyes will take longer
than the rest of you to start working."
	"Come to life?  What's going on?  Why can't I open my hand?"
	"You don't have hands silly.  You have hooves."
	"What?  What in the name of Heaven AM I?"
	Ruth sat down and calmly picked up the struggling animal.  "You are a
small zebra plushie. You..."
	"I'm a plushie?  NO!  No, Ruth, I'm a man!  I'm Zech!  I'm Zech Rabin and
I'm a man!"
	"No.  You're confused.  Zech is my late husband."
	"Late?  You mean I'm dead?  I died?  The jar... Honey, what did you do
with the jar of pufflin?"
	Ruth's heart nearly froze in her chest.  "Leeroy said it was cotton.  He
used it to make this zebra for me!"
	"Oh no... NO!  This isn't what was supposed to happen!  I was using the
pufflin to record all of my memories, not to transfer my mind!  I wanted to
be remembered!  The only immortality I wanted was for people to know who I
was, not to become a plushie!"
	"Oh Zech!"  Ruth cradled the zebra as he cried tearlessly.
.....
	I had been watching Leeroy for some time, trying to figure out what in the
world he was putting together.  It looked like nothing as much as a green ,
scaly leech with several gold dorsal fins.  I sucked my coffee through a
straw and observed as the object finally took shape, being still
unrecognizable.
	"What IS that?" I asked him.
	"A prosthetic dragon's tail."
	"Someone lose theirs?"
	"Only by an accident of birth."
	"Huh?"
	Leeroy smiled.  "This is for a flesh-and-blood.  He's a college student
who had this crazy idea... he wanted me to make him a realistic-looking
tail which he would re-stuff with pufflin and wear and use as a hindbrain."
	"A hindbrain?"
	"Yes.  To increase his memory and intelligence."
	I looked at my own tail.  It was filled with pufflin, but it had never
done that for me.  Then again, I'd never been anything but happy with the
brain I have.
	I heard the door open and turned around.  In stepped Ruth Rabin with a
zebra under her arm.  "Mrs. Rabin!" I said, rising from my chair.
"Welcome.  How are you?"
	"We're fine, Oren.  Both of us are."
	"Who's your friend?"
	"This is Zech.  No, I don't mean I named him after my late husband.  I
mean that this IS my late husband."
	"I don't understand."
	She stepped past me toward Leeroy.  "Zech was trying to record his
memories into a jar of pufflin.  The jar you used to stuff this zebra.  It
wasn't cotton."
	"Oh?"
	"At the moment of death, Zech's mind was captured in the jar.  He might
have been trapped there forever, except that you gave him a body.  Thank
you, Leeroy."
	Tom, who watched from above the fireplace, looked down skeptically.  "How
can we be sure it's you?" he asked.
	"Who else would be able to tell you the only Oren the Otter story in which
our friend, Jesse the kangaroo, never appeared at any point."
	"And why is that?"
	"Because "Sherry meets Oren the Otter" was not written by Oren, but by
Sherry Edwards."
	"My gosh, it IS you!"
	There was a lot of happiness as the gang at Joe's coffee house gathered
around and welcomed their comrade back from the dead.
	I myself stood back apace.
	Sadie took note of this.  She came over and asked "what's wrong?"
	I nodded toward the back door.  She followed me outside.
	"Aren't you happy that Zech is alive?" she asked.
	"Yes, I am happy, but..."
	But what?"
	"At the same time, it scares me."
	"Why is that?"
	"His mind was trapped in his pufflin and it lived on when his body died."
	"So?  How is that bad?"
	"Look at me, Sadie.  I put on this costume one day and now I can't ever
take it off.  I'm a half-human half-plush THING."  I curled my tail around
front for emphasis.  What if my human body dies and I go on living as a
suit with a rotting corpse inside?"
	Sadie seemed a little shocked for a moment before she replied "Well at
least you'd still have a humanoid form.  Me, I'd be nothing but an arm if
that happened to me."
	"Sadie, I'm serious!"
	"So am I.  If by chance you did live on as the suit, We could taxadermise
you, stuff you, and you'd be a perfectly normal plushie.  I'm not saying
that your worry isn't legitimate, but you really should try to believe that
everything will work out for the best."
	"I'm trapped in an otter suit, and you expect me to be an optimist?"
	"Yes!  If it wasn't for that suit... you never would have met me."
	I smiled.  "True enough."
	"Now come on.  We don't want Zech to think you're not happy to see him back."
	When I re-entered, there was Zech, sitting on a stool at the counter,
crying.  Everyone else was sitting around pretending not to look at him.
Joe touched me on the arm and said "He asked to be left alone."
	"Zech, before I wander off and leave you to wallow in your sorrow, can I
ask what's wrong?"
	"What's wrong?  Look at me!"
	"Now why does that sound familiar?"
	"Oren, my life is over!"
	"It was over anyway."
	"I'll never be able to get a job like this!"
	"You're retired.  Of course, maybe now you can spend some time with Ruth."
	Zech looked back at his wife.  "Ruth?"
	"Yes, Ruth!  You have been so wrapped up in yourself lately that you've
made her feel like dirt!  If I were you, I'd get down on my floppy little
knees and thank GOD that you have a wife like Ruth and now you have an
excuse to spend some of your time on the woman you've promised your life
to."  As soon as I said that, I realized how hard I had come down on a man
in pain.  He surprised me, though.
	"You're right." he said.
	"I am?"
	"Yes.  It's time for me to think about Ruth for a change."  He hopped down
from the stool and flooped over to his wife.  "Ruth, I am very sorry for
having ignored you.  I do love you, and now, perhaps it is time for us to
be together for a change."
	"You're not obligated." said Ruth.  "We're not technically married now
that you're..."
	"I'm not obligated by law, but by my heart."  He hopped up into her lap,
and the two of them sat there, loving each other.  That night, they retired
to their home, and were not seen for many days.

	The next time I saw Zech, he was much larger.  He had been getting
successive modifications.  He was now a morphic zebra of normal human size.
 He had wanted to become a plush human, but Fred had strongly urged him to
reconsider that course.  Plushies have it bad enough, but dolls have it
worst of all.  For some reason, the public finds it easier to accept a
teddy bear than a cloth and stuffing humanoid.  There were, of course,
other modifications which are not necessary to mention.
	Zech and Ruth both became regulars at the coffee house after that.  Zech
because it is a wonderful social place for plushies, and Ruth because Zech
refused to let her leave his side.
	Ruth was the happiest widow I have ever known.