Mr Floyd, in "The Massively Overpriced College Shop Monopoly

IV.
The main gate of the College was an appropriately ugly, depressing structure of sandstone and rusting wrought iron which was painted navy blue every couple of decades, that was overlooked by a yellow arch commemorating College Old Boys who had been silly enough to think that their country was really worth going off to some other overseas country to kill some people and getting shot in return, dying ' so he had been told ' entirely for Teddy's benefit. This was where the prefects stood in the mornings, to conduct uniform inspection, which for some esoteric reason unknown to Teddy was a very important part of College life. Uniform inspections were a common occurrence in the College, often taking place at random, and in entirely unforeseeable circumstances. At the gate and at the tuckshop were the prefects' favourite haunts, but also on the commute in the afternoon, and on the way to and from class, anyone could be stopped by a prefect with nothing better to do and a head full of nothing but his own sense of self-importance, and made to prove to the prefect that he had every article of College-required clothing properly fitted.

VI.
Wrecherly had found out how important flawless dress was to the authority figures in the College the year before, on his second day, when he was accosted by Dennet, a swaggering cavalier of a prefect, who took his job seriously and his rugby even more so, who had pulled Wrecherly roughly by the back of his shirt and forced him up against a wall when he saw that his tie was not completely covering his top button, which was also undone.
'What is this?' Dennet had shouted into the other's ear. 'Why is your tie not done up properly?'
'It's just a tie,' Wrecherly had replied indignantly, unable to understand why such force had been at all necessary.
'It's not just a tie!' Dennet spluttered. 'It's a very significant symbol of your affiliation with the College, and the pride you take in your school.'
'It is?' Wrecherly looked down at his shirt, and still saw a tie.
'Don't get smart with me, boy,' Dennet warned Wrecherly, who was only a year younger than the prefect.
'I'm not getting smart! This is just my first week here. I don't have any pride in the College.'
Dennet's left eye began to twitch in frustration. 'No pride? How can you not have any pride in this fantastic institution? Look at that building '' he indicated with a sweeping arm motion the pallid main building of the College '' look at its splendour! Such amazing, Victorian architecture! Such an outstanding view! Such immaculate grounds! How can you not look at that and not feel your heart swelling with joy?'
'It's just a building,' Wrecherly told him. Dennet had been rendered so aghast by Wrecherly's lack of school spirit that he issued him a detention on the spot for insubordination.
'I'd sure like to give you one for sedition, as well,' he told him. 'I don't know how sure I can be that you aren't from some spy from another school, come to try and make us look bad.'
'Can't you trust me, on that one?' Wrecherly had asked.
'Hey, where's your jacket?' Dennet asked suddenly, as if just becoming aware of its absence.
'In my locker,' Wrecherly replied warily, unsure of what was to follow.
'Why aren't you wearing it?'
'Because I was told we don't have to wear it in to classes, only to and from school, and chapel and assemblies and stuff.'
'You've been lied to,' Dennet lied. 'The College jacket is an integral part of the College boy's uniform, and must be worn at all times.'
Wrecherly overcame the temptation to ask why Dennet wasn't wearing his coat, and simply explained, 'Oh, well Mr Johnson told me yesterday that '''
'What?' Dennet practically screamed. 'How dare you accuse such a great man as Mr Johnson of lying! Why, I bet you're¦ you're¦ what rugby team are you in, anyway?'
'Um¦ I¦ I don't play rugby. I play soccer.'
'Soccer?!' shouted Dennet. 'Soccer is not a real sport!'
'Yeah, it is,' Wrecherly told him, his initial fear replaced by a sense of incredulity, 'Actually, I think Mr Johnson told me that more people are playing soccer now than are playing rug'''
'Shut up, you lying¦ soccer-playing¦ fuck!' Dennet roared at him, red in the face, tears of anger and pride streaming down his cheeks. 'I ought to report you to Mr Floyd right now, and have you put on a stage!' A disciplinary stage was the College's crude attempt at punishment, whereby boys who didn't want to be at the school to begin with who weren't put off misbehaviour by Saturday detentions were given what amounted to a warning and a slap on the wrist for a serious offence, and if they misbehaved seriously again, were given exactly what they wanted ' suspension, or at best, expulsion ' in what the College authorities, who like Dennet could not understand how anybody could possibly have ambivalent or negative attitudes towards the College, believed was an act of chastisement, not kindness. Dennet had the good sense not to actually assault Wrecherly further, and stormed off, perplexed at how people could take no pride in their school. As he was considering marching straight to Floyd's office, for once in his life he had a better idea. An original idea. The concept was foreign to Dennet, and he knew it. That morning had seen the birth of the Augustly Magnanimous School Spirit Cultivation Campaign.
Wrecherly stared at Dennet's retreating back, confused at the strange episode which had just occurred. Dennet seemed to be an original breed, a specimen unique to the College. Wrecherly had never come across anyone so blindly loyal to anything before, and hoped that he never would have to go through a similar experience ever again. He wondered with a feeling of dread if such incidents were common at the College, and began to regret his parents' decision to send him to the school. He knew that he had to at least try to fit in, that was what his mentors and relatives and teachers throughout the years had told him. He looked back down to his chest, at the green-and-black striped tie which was still loose around his collar. He tried to see what Dennet had seen. He couldn't. He, closed one eye, crossed them, squinted, waved the tie around, but he still could only see an article of clothing. If pride in the College was what was needed here, he didn't have it. He wondered what pride was like. Was it like happiness? Or was it different? He'd never felt proud of an institution before. He wasn't sure how to be, and suddenly felt ashamed, that by only his second day at the College he had found himself an exile, simply because he was unable to induce the same emotional response to his new school that others could so easily. He remembered that only the morning before he had stood first in the sun outside the gate of the College, and had thought that he would make something of himself at that school. How foolish, he thought.

VII.
The first morning back at school was always a rather ominous occasion for students, and the prospect of ten more weeks of school and classes and work and training and Extra-Curricular and sport and chapel and assembly and house meeting and detention was not helped by the drizzle that wasn't quite rain and wasn't quite not. It was a depressing sort of in-between damp that infected everything with its morose chill. Teddy didn't so much mind the work, because he could ignore it with relative ease, but he did mind the people he was forced to go to classes with. One of these people was Scotty, a delinquent rebel with a nominal passion for learning, upon whom Mr Rampion had taken pity and had placed in his Advanced Senior English class, where he sat next to Teddy and, when not trying to rope him into conversation, showed Rampion how much enthusiasm he had for the higher study of English language by drawing guitars all through his book.
Scotty was at the gate when Teddy arrived, forcing Teddy to swear profusely under his breath when he spotted him, having hoped to have at least ten minutes without Scotty following around like some sadistic little puppy that refuses to give its owner a minute's peace. He was presently tied up with a one-sided argument with Mr Floyd, the College's very own disciplinarian whose only job when he was not running Friday afternoon detentions was finding people with whom to run them. Scotty hated Floyd with a passion, and had once begun campaigning a private war against the stout, pretentious symbol of aesthetic conformity, which culminated in the Well-Meaning but Ultimately Failing English Revolution, which to Scotty's credit had failed for reasons beyond his immediate control before it had failed because of Scotty.
They were standing off to the side of the footpath on the roadside, opposite the gate, between the two dead poplars that stood silent guard over the sandstone pillars, and Floyd was speaking to him emphatically, pointing at various parts of Scotty's uniform that must have been out of place. Teddy figured that Scotty was going to run after him once he'd finished ignoring Floyd, so he decided to wait. He guessed that they had been at it for a while, because Scotty had already given some ground, and had done his tie up, which in real terms meant that Floyd had gone through the elegant song and dance of telling him what a disgrace he was to the College, Scotty admitting once again that he didn't care what the College thought of him, then Floyd getting pissed off because it was his job (and possibly, postulated Teddy with a silent, wry grin, his passion) and told him to fix his tie, which involved Scott 'doing it up' by touching his collar with each hand, then Floyd telling him again, at which point Scotty would actually redo the poorly-executed knot. According to how these interactions usually went, Teddy surmised that Floyd had not yet told Scotty to get rid of his tattered, brown suede belt and his skull rings, but had told him to cut his hair and buy a new shirt, so Teddy knew that they wouldn't be long before Floyd concluded with the formula speech on proper deportment. Floyd seemed to get a kick out of telling kids that when the public sees a College boy not wearing their uniform properly, they are going to assume that the College is undisciplined and therefore they aren't going to send their children there. Oh, but if Scotty had been more eloquent, thought Teddy as he leaned against the pillar of the gate ignoring the prefect who was telling him to piss off, what a showdown could have ensued! Rather than, he winced, the painful anti-climax 'Sorry, sir.'
If only Teddy actually had the courage to step in and ask Floyd whenever he told some kid the good one about the public's relationship to the College being based on the superficial appearance of the students in public, 'So they might stop sending their kids to a school which already is dangerously over-enrolled and understaffed, and without adequate infrastructure? So they just jack up the price of enrolments, which leads people to believe that the quality of education here is of a high standard, after all, don't the rich just love the pay-more-for-quality charade? So the College sees this as a way to get more funding for the painfully small number of teachers there actually are here, but as a carrot give them a slightly higher salary, yet keep even more for people like you, who do nothing productive, as well as the Admin ' the hobby teachers, if you will ' and to pay for the stupid grounds that need to look pristine, just like the kids, as well as that bloody manor they insist on putting the Principal up in, rather than selling it and making some actual money for the school, with which to make some actual classrooms, rather than just renovating the current ones and buying new swivel chairs to make us look high-tech, when in fact the old chairs did so much more for one's back and posture, not to mention concentration, but hey, who needs an education when you have a rugby team that wins every once in a while? They sure love to look out for us, don't they? And so more and more students are enrolled out of the College's greed, and the quality of education gets lower and lower as the student to teacher ratio does as well, until finally ' what am I saying? There is no finally: it's a deep, limitless spiral into greed at the expense of greedy children and their rich parents. And you're a part of it.' If only. Teddy sighed in awe of the purely hypothetical.

VIII.
Scotty rushed over to Teddy in infantile excitement, while Teddy raised his eyebrows in judgement, grunting an empty greeting. He followed him down to the College Shop, where Teddy planned on buying a Seniors' tie, which he was getting simply because it looked better and neater than the common College tie, despite Manford's protesting condemnation of hypocrisy. Teddy didn't understand where people like Scotty who didn't wear their College uniforms properly were coming from. As far as he was concerned, it was just clothing; undoing one's top button and loosening one's tie, so far as Teddy could tell, really achieved nothing but annoy prefects and staff members who cared about that sort of thing, it didn't prove any point, unless it was some subtle and mysterious rebellion understood only by the likes of Scotty and Habib and Greader, which Teddy doubted. As far as he was concerned, it was complete and utter bullshit. And that was why Teddy was going down to the College Shop to buy a new tie, and Scotty wasn't buying a belt.
'Why don't you just get a belt?' Teddy asked him. 'It'll make your pants stay up, and you won't look like such a goddamn redneck.'
'I don't want to,' he reasoned, pulling his pants up about his arse-cheeks, and promptly started talking about things that made him feel more comfortable. Scotty had this peculiar mannerism of his speech which precluded him from being able to pronounce the sound 'th'. It was a rather humorous impediment which slurred his already shaky grasp on enunciation, and permitted Teddy to understand only one word in four. And of those words, he wasn't particularly interested in any of them.
'Hey, did you see fhat Metallica concert fhing on last week, at like fhree a.m.? It was really good, especially where they did fhat cover of Last Caress which I fhink was really cool, especially how they just go straight into Green Hell, I love fhe bass on fhat. James Hetfield is a really good singer; I hate it how people put like so much shit on him, just 'cause¦ 'cause fhey listen to shitty rap and all fhat other bullshit. Like then they played some clips of The Clash which was cool, but I fhink¦' It was somewhat before that time when Teddy had stopped caring what Scotty fhought, drowning out with the some difficulty the monotonous, ill-conceived discord of Scotty's language. Occasionally Teddy and Wiggles would come up with new and exciting ways to ignore him; their current favourite was to just laugh politely like they knew what he was talking about, and agree 'Yeah' each time his speaking tempo slowed. It was a handy conversational pretence which Scotty never caught onto, and so made for an agreeable state of affairs for all parties. Scotty had an audience, and Teddy didn't have to listen to him, or insult him by telling him to shut the hell up. Teddy had found that it had wide-ranging ramifications on his colloquial dealings with many other people, whom he had since stopped listening to. Simply by applying what Wiggles had aptly named the Scotty Technique, Teddy had halved the number of people he actually communicated with on any given day. Soon, he hoped, it would be possible to completely disengage himself from any sort of verbal contact with other people who might potentially do him harm.

XI.
To the College's credit, it had been constructed in such a way that although it was a rather large property, if one took it in steps, it seemed quite small. The College Shop was just across the Quad, and down some steps, at the bottom of the library building face the main oval. The College Shop was a monopolistic mart run by discontented volunteers from the College Mothers' Association, the society of trophy wives who had nothing better to do than to meddle in their sons' educational affairs, and spent their days gossiping in one of the only air-conditioned rooms in the College, occasionally over-charging students and unwary new parents for such obvious necessities as uniforms, sports equipment, stationary; in fact, anything that could possibly be used by a boy at the College and could be bought elsewhere for half the price was stocked at the College Shop. However, in the case of uniforms, they held the all power, since there was no option whether or not one bought the standard College-ordered apparel, and thus they could charge as unbelievably high as they wanted to. It was all for a worthy cause, of course; typically, it provided the funds for the next Mothers' Association Quarterly Champagne Luncheon, or contributed to the Rugby Support Committee, of which their College Old Boy husbands were all members.
Teddy was always confused on the odd occasion when he forced himself into the monopolistic hell of the College shop. He was confused because although it seemed that the women who ran it were doing the work voluntarily, and who had no other worries in their lives except the communication problems at home between them and the Latin American help, they always seemed furious and agitated. Teddy wondered what was going on in these ladies' lives to make them act the way they did. They were rude, forceful women who knew exactly what Teddy wanted and told him.
'That's not what I want,' Teddy told them, pushing away the proffered tie. 'This is a regular tie. I'm looking for a Seniors' tie. You know, the single-coloured one, with the crest on it?' The mother serving him looked like something out of a nightmare. She was a tall, lithe woman who at some stage in her life had probably suffered from anorexia. She looked confused.
'I'm not sure we have any of that in stock,' she lied. 'Are you sure you don't want one of these ties?' She thrust the green-and-black striped tie back in Teddy's face.
'Yes, I know what I want,' Teddy persisted. 'I already have one of those. See? I'm wearing it.'
'Why don't you get something else, instead? That's an old-looking jacket you're wearing. Why don't you get a new one?'
'Because a new one is like three hundred and fifty dollars and isn't worth a cent of it?'
'There's no need to be like that,' snapped Jezebel, who had clearly been infected with school spirit from her sons and husband. 'They'll give you a detention if you don't have a neat-looking coat, you know.'
'Is that so?' Teddy asked, who had been at the College for five years already and knew more about the workings of College uniform rules better than this woman did. 'I didn't know that. But what I do know is that you have got those Seniors' ties, I just saw someone walk out of here with one.'
'Are you sure? It could have been something else. Why don't you buy this tie, instead? She offered another tie, a house tie, which could only be worn by the captains of houses. Teddy wasn't a house captain, and it wasn't even of his house.
'Do they train you to work here?' he asked, without a hint of scorn.
'Oh, my no,' Jezebel replied, without any recognition that she had been at all insulted. 'I just put my name down with the Mothers' Association, and then come in on the day my name is on the roster. Isn't that neat?' She suddenly turned friendly, once the conversation turned to the subject of her. Teddy perceived this, and became immediately wary. His escape was assured when he spied a box in the storage room behind her with a huge label reading "SENIORS' TIES slapped conspicuously on the side.
'Why don't you try having a look in that box there?' Teddy indicated the package.
'What box?' she asked, turning around. As her back was turned, Teddy rolled his eyes, made his fingers into a pistol, put it in his mouth and silently blew his brains out. When Jezebel saw the box, Teddy knew that he had humiliated her. He hadn't wanted to do that. All he had wanted was a new tie. But what was done, was done.
'You're not allowed to look back there! That's a restricted area,' she squawked, to cover up her embarrassment.
'It's okay,' Teddy assured her. 'I don't think you're a failure.' However, his insincerity was obvious this time, conveyed by the smirk which he just couldn't suppress. Jezebel muttered something about men. Teddy was prone to sexist remarks from women. For some reason, they really did not get along with him. They seemed to take offence at everything he said. The possibility did not occur to him that they were not different from the many males who also did not get along with him and took offence at most things he said, but who instead took a different tact in expressing their displeasure, which was indignant feminist outrecuidance.

X.
Once Teddy had been the unwitting victim of Dennet's Augustly Magnanimous School Spirit Cultivation Campaign, and had been drafted by a 'birth-date bingo' selection process to serve hard time in the College dining hall kitchen, washing, cleaning, and generally being at the whim of the tyrannic kitchen staff, most of whom, for some peculiar reason known only to the highest echelons of the College Admin, were all women. Once, Teddy had been late to turn up, because he really didn't care whether the Juniors were served their highly nutritious lunches from a clean, infection-free trough, nor did he care whether or not the obnoxious head kitchen lady thought that he actually had nothing better to do than turn up enthusiastically two days a week and take filthy, demeaning, food-encrusted orders from her. This being in the days before Deanow had touched Teddy's heart and given him meaning, Teddy replied with some self-saving reason that sounded like a lie and was. The kitchen lady rebutted bitterly with,
'That's a typical male response.'
Teddy's left eye began to twitch. He felt self-righteous rage well up inside of him, and knew that it felt good. He began shouting at the kitchen lady, that women could be sexist too, and that he took offence at her labelling him as a stereotypical male, and that after all the years that women had been campaigning for equal status in society they sure as shit didn't know how to act civilly once they had it. Later, he found that couldn't actually remember any of the words he had actually said, but only had a dim memory of the incident taking place in a surreal state of slow-motion.

XI.
It suddenly sped up all sped up to normal as he found himself in the waiting room to Mr Johnson's office, sitting next to Corlap. He was there for a different reason, but Teddy was pretty sure that it had something to do with pissing off some staff member. Corlap was always pissing off staff members, in the funniest way. And he always got out of it, too.
'Eh, Corlap,' Teddy greeted the hugely obese boy as he walked sullenly into the waiting room to Johnson's office. 'What are you in for?'
'Oh, yeah, I told Mr Floyd to fuck off.'
Teddy laughed. He had said it so matter-of-factly. But it was good that Corlap was there as well. Teddy was the last person to be superstitious, but there were some people who were just good omens, and some who were harbingers of doom. Corlap, for all his moronic lunacy, seemed unable to get into serious trouble, and Teddy thought that this characteristic was contagious.
'Why'd you do that for?'
'He told me to pick up rubbish.'
'What for?' Teddy wondered who had cleaned school playgrounds back in the day when disciplinarians could legally utilise corporal punishment.
'Because he's a cunt.'
'Yeah, I know, but why did he tell you to pick it up?'
'Oh. I threw it there.'
'So why didn't you just pick it up then?'
'I didn't want to.'
'Fair enough. So you told him told fuck off instead?'
'No, then I threw more rubbish on the ground.'
'Why on earth did you do that for?'
'Well, I figured it was an all-or-nothing deal. So I went for it.'
'So what did Floyd do?'
'Told me to pick that up as well.'
'And then you told him to fuck off.'
'No, then I picked it up.'
'Didn't he give you a detention or anything for subordination?'
'No, he sent me on my way. I left.'
'So when did you tell him to fuck off then?'
'Oh, I didn't.'
'Then why are you here?'
'I said already: I told Floyd to fuck off. Damn, clean the shit outta your ears.'
'Why'd you do that for?' Teddy felt a sudden surge of déjà vu.
'I egged his car.'
'Why'd you do that for?'
'Because the prick tried to make me pick up rubbish.'
'It was your litter!'
'Not this stuff. This was someone else's.'
'Why did he try to make you pick up someone else's rubbish for?'
'Didn't I just tell you? I egged his car. It's like we're talking around in circles. What would you expect him to do? Stand by and wish me a good bloody morning?'
'Well, he was more than lenient making you just pick up litter,' Teddy noted. Especially considering that harsh bastard. Why'd you tell him to fuck off, if he let you off the hook so easily?'
'Because he wouldn't give me a detention.'
'What? Why would you want a detention?'
'How else would I get a legitimate excuse to skip cricket training?'
They both sat there quietly for a while, Teddy finally out of answers. At last, he broke the silence.
'You probably should've egged him, instead.'
'I was out of eggs.' Then Corlap stood, and left.

XII.
The world was full of peculiarly-timed and even more peculiarly-placed comings and goings, Teddy thought. He wondered it even half of them were real. It certainly stood to reason that they didn't happen, since everyone was always telling him that he made most things up, and imagined the rest. He was in the habit of consoling himself with the happy prospect that if what these people were telling him was true, and then he needn't worry, because he was only imagining them telling him. That pissed Black off immensely, because he was always telling Teddy that all the conspiracies and plots against him were fantasies.
As he was finishing congratulating himself on another successful delusion, Teddy heard the voices in Mr Johnson's office reach a crescendo. He could make out Johnson's voice, but could not recognise the other, which was that of a young man who was shouting hysterically, it seemed. It reminded Teddy chillingly of the screaming he had heard when he had been held prisoner in the rifle storage room.
After five or so minutes of this, the door opened and Berry emerged, ashen-faced. He walked out, taking no notice of Teddy. Presently, Johnson appeared in the doorway, dishevelled and amazingly out-of-character from the usual stoic deportment with which he normally bore himself. His face was flushed and astonished, and there were thick damp patches of sweat on his shirt under his arms.
Johnson spotted Teddy, demanded to know who he was, what his business was and dismissed him, all in one sentence, without waiting for a response. He retreated to his office, slamming the door behind him. Teddy, as shocked by the incident as Berry had been, slunk back to the kitchen lady and told her that Mr Johnson had demanded that Teddy was never again to be rostered on kitchen duty with those who had no respect for the feelings of the other sex, then went off to think about the mysterious conversation to which he had been an unknown observer. He got the feeling that he most certainly was not supposed to have heard Johnson ask,
'Won't you kill yourself? For us?'
'Twenty-five dollars,' Jezebel said of Teddy's tie.
'What? Twenty-five? That's a bit steep, isn't it?'
'Well, that's what the price is, so you can pay it, or you can just get a detention for improper uniform, can't you?' Teddy at last came to the conclusion that this woman was a bona fide bitch. The remarkable thing about the volunteer mothers who ran the College Shop and other such commercial activities run by the Mothers' Association, Teddy thought, was that they had no idea whatsoever about the rules concerning uniform. While in this instance Jezebel was most probably accurate, they had once tried to flog off a house jersey onto him, despite the fact that he never actually needed one. They had claimed Teddy needed to wear them to the fortnightly house meetings. Teddy had told them otherwise. They had flown into a rage, squawking like crows, and he had left laughing.

XIII.
It would seem now however, that Teddy would have no choice but to submit to their closed-market molestation of peoples' pockets. But Teddy wasn't going to stand for it. Teddy was going to whinge and bitch to his friends until they got sick of it. That was pretty much all he did when he came upon anything that boiled his blood, and if anything ever came of it; hey, he would brag, bonus. That, and boycotting. Teddy found boycotting tremendous fun, because one did not have to actually do anything, while at the same time proving a point, regardless of what it may be.
Teddy paid that devil woman her twenty five dollars, cursed her to hell, and left, just in time to see Wiggles out the front. Scotty was still talking about some music that nobody but he and Manford cared about, and just pissing Teddy off further with his incessancy, so Teddy just walked off. He caught up to Wiggles, who was a complete bastard, to get it over and done with. Wiggles was a not tall, not short, angry young man who, having first become aware of his own personal shortcomings early on in his life, had made the conscious decision to ignore them entirely. He was heading for the Tuckshop, and Teddy decided on some breakfast, and to order himself some lunch for once, rather then waiting in that crowd with a bunch of spoilt rich kids who can't comprehend that order is the way for things to go well; that is, a queue.
The Tuckshop had changed its prices again; now everything was more expensive, and they had gotten rid of all the unhealthy foods. The price was quantitatively greater, the food qualitatively lesser. The sausage roll had been usurped by the garden salad, and the meat pie had become sushi. It seemed like everyone liked sushi, and from what Teddy heard it was pretty good (and, he would add sarcastically, it looked it too), and it sold well, but in fact nobody really liked it. Teddy simply could not understand why they still bought it; after all, he had always been taught that sheep were grazing animals, they don't eat sushi. This was something Teddy would cryptically say to people after they answer that they didn't know why they had bought the sushi. Nobody could figure out what he meant. The same people could also not figure out where all this unwanted food went after sale, because nobody was eating it; in fact Teddy was not entirely sure that anybody actually inquired.
Of course, the revolution of the Tuckshop's stock caused a rumble of discontent among many of the established patrons, but nobody really did anything about it, because there was only one Tuckshop, and it was revered as Yahweh with His manna. At a price, of course. There was only One True Tuckshop, so they took what they were offered.
Teddy boycotted the Tuckshop from that day onward.

XIV.
'It's absolute bullshit,' he proclaimed loudly as soon as he exited the place with his four-or-five dollar coffee ("Made by me, instant no less: the best in the world) and synthetic cheese on burnt toast. Teddy had been unable to order his pig-entrails-in-pastry for lunch ' sausage rolls were off the menu ' and he was angered at the change. There were few things about which Teddy was viciously conservative, and this was one.
'All I want is a bloody sausage roll, and now I get hawked this sushi crap.'
'Teddy,' Wiggles began calmly, patronisingly, 'why then did you buy the sushi?'
'Spite, that's why. Screw the Tuckshop and those fucking leeches, trying to get their filthy hands on my un-earned money. I take their sushi, to stop them selling it to someone else. I'll throw it away.'
'But they still profit, whether you eat it or not. This has got to be the worst moral crusade you've ever been on.'
It was true, he had to admit. Teddy had been on some rather pointless moral crusades, in retrospect. But he was able to justify every one of them with the argument that they had all seemed appropriate at the time. Teddy had once read a book by a science fiction writer by the name of Kilgore Trout, in which the hero was abducted by a group of aliens in a flying saucer. When he finally met his kidnappers, he asked them 'Why me?' The aliens had not replied, but had shown him a room filled with millions upon millions of tiny ants, and told him to pick one up. When he had done this, they said 'See?' as if this explained everything. The aliens then locked him in the room, and said he could never leave the room unless he put each individual ant into its own small jar they had provided. The doomed human set about this, but his struggle was in vain, because the queen ants somewhere in the millions of ants were popping out more and more baby larva ants, much fast than Kilgore Trout's human could put them into their jars. So all he achieved was continually asking the aliens 'Why me?' Ever since reading that, Teddy had been asking himself the same question.
'Wiggles, the only reason you don't understand principles is that you have none of your own.'
Wiggles laughed caustically. 'Yeah, I guess that's true. What's your point?'
'You're an empty shell of a human being with no sense of right and wrong past your own immediate wants who will die a lonely death?' Teddy suggested.
Wiggles considered this. 'You're on the right track,' he encouraged Teddy. 'Continue.'
'Doesn't your life ever feel¦ I don't know ' empty? Meaningless¦ or anything? You do feel, right?' Teddy was concerned about Wiggles, because as far as he could see, Wiggles shared none of the empathetic abilities common to all other living members of his species. At times, Teddy even suspected that Wiggles was dead. There were many people who Teddy suspected were dead. The dead did not feel. Teddy wondered whether it might actually be better not to feel anything. He had reasoned it all out in his head. If one could not feel, then one was unable to be afflicted by hurtful emotions and malicious people. Moreover, had no reason to be afraid of death, much less be afraid of all those people who were out to murder him.
'No, not really,' Wiggles replied. 'I mean, I'm not an entirely heartless bastard, you know.' This was a bald-faced lie. Both of them knew this. 'But, I just don't see how my life could be any better by doing anyone else favours. Seems self-defeating, if you ask me.'
'What would you think if everyone felt that way towards you?' Teddy asked, throwing away the toast.
'Well, I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?' Wiggles replied.
'Well done.' Teddy appreciated people who could quote literature. He saw it as a sign of culture. 'But it's not the right way to think. I can't explain it, it's just¦ why do people act like cruel bastards?'
'Because they can get away with it,' Wiggles laughed. 'How should we act, then? Who are you anyway, the morality police? This isn't the nineteenth century, you know.'
'Most people tend to make decisions based on the criteria "other people expect it of me, or "it's the rules.'
'Pah! Conformists!' Wiggles spat contemptuously, though Teddy could read the irony. 'Now, God knows you're nothing like that. What about all the crazy independent sceptical outcast cynics like you? What's your morality?'
'I like to think that I act on the most advanced level: setting up for yourself what you believe in and sticking to it, stubborn as a bastard, in any situation; consistency.'
'You mean like Hitler?'
'Or Ghandi, or the Buddha, depending on who you admire. You can take Jesus,' Teddy added mockingly, 'if you want.
'Let's stick with Hitler.'
'Whatever. But then you have the cowards who only act like that on occasions, when the law doesn't work, or they don't have a peer group to support them. When they're on their own, forced by the rarest of uncontrollable circumstances to act independently. More often than not, they'll fall back on some already dictated moral code or some ridiculous shit like that. They're the worst.'
'Why's that? I thought I was the worst.'
'No, you're just basic,' Teddy explained. 'Immature, and puerile.'
'Thanks.'
'No charge. I can't stand people who follow a system of beliefs which aren't their own personally ' like a lot of religious people who don't have a proper understanding of their faith; that's a good example ' and follow them because some bigoted prick with a Jehovah complex told them to in his book.'
'What's wrong with that?' Wiggles asked.
'They think they're so high and mighty and have Right and God and Country on their side, when they don't even think about what their doing.'
'Yes, but what's wrong with that?' he persisted.
'They're hypocrites. Deluded hypocrites.'
'Tell me,' asked Wiggles, 'what exactly sparked this off again? Was it the sausage roll? It was the sausage roll, wasn't it? I mean, Christ, you haven't been back fifteen minutes, and you're already raving about hypocrites and the Principle and morality. You need coffee.'