by Fred Stang
Tolliver’s Travels
...with Mr. Mouse in the Worldwide Web
A Book of Entertainments and Diversions
by
Fred Stang
Copyright © 2016 by Fred Stang
All Rights Reserved.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Into the World-Wide Web
2. The Identical Men
3. The Evil King and the Fair Maiden
4. A Stern Teacher and His Brilliant Young Pupil
5. In the Shadow of the Great Pyramid
6. The Grumpy Camel and Thousands of Bananas
7. Two Timers – The Hard-Boiled Egg Story
8. The Case of the Missing Dollar
9. Apples and Oranges
10. The Big Cheese
11. The Friendly Isle of Amiti
12. The Truth of the Matter
13. Between the Lions
14. Which Doctor?
The Island of Doctor Yes, Doctor No, and Doctor Maybe
15. Mr Quirm
Many a Quaint and Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore
16. Chessboard and Dominoes
17. No Big Deal
18. Pick a Number, Any Number
19. The Monte Hall Paradox
20. Reflections on the Cigar Game
21. Ping-Pong Ball… and Pins Galore
22. Same Place, Same Time
23. Farewell, Mouse
PREFACE
Here, presented for your entertainment, are the adventures of Tolliver Tilden III in the World-Wide Web, a tangle of puzzling encounters, all accompanied by his new friend and helper, Mr Mouse. Unlike many storybooks, you can read only the parts you are enjoying and be welcome to skip what does not catch your interest. But, a brief word about the reading of it.
These challenges are presented one by one as the pair travel along in their virtual world, all in all twenty questions, more or less. At a certain point, in each and every case, you will see that the challenge has been presented and it is clear what is to be discovered, found out, or devised as a solution. At this point, you are free to put down the work and find this solution on your own. Or, you can simply keep reading, to find clues and hints perhaps, and to read the solution proposed. You will not have to “look up” an answer!
It is suggested that more fun can be had by taking the time to find the answer for yourself, but this is entirely up to you. The first commandment for you here is “enjoy!”
CHAPTER 1
INTO THE WORLD WIDE WEB
On his twelfth birthday, Tolliver Tilden III turned on his present, a brand-new shining computer, and was promptly swallowed by the World-Wide Web. It was the first time he had ever worked a computer or gone online all by himself, a very exciting moment, but what an unexpected outcome!
A deep whooshing sound transported him through a swirling maze of zips, zings and zwiggles, flashing lights and gossamer wires, depositing him in the middle of a country road facing toward a low hill. And that was odd because, only moments earlier, he had been thinking about just such a road, with a view of just such a hill.
He heard someone singing:
“Happy, happy are the mice.
happy are the nice, nice,
nice, nice mice…”
Before him, something he had most definitely not been thinking of, cavorted a mouse, about four feet tall, roundish in figure, and wearing the most unmatched outfit Tollie had ever seen – a plaid jacket, red and white striped shirt, polka dot tie (yellow on black), and checkered pants in purple and orange. The toes of his natty black shoes curled upward. The shoes were themselves impossibly well-polished and glinted giddily over his green socks.
“Hello, I am Mouse, but you may call me Mr Mouse.” He spoke! He also stood upright on his hind legs and walked on these as easily as a human walks on two feet. “I am here to serve you, Tollie.”
“How do you know my name?” Tollie was a very curious boy, having caused his parents no end of dismay in having to answer his endless questions day in and day out, though they miraculously remained patient with him. To themselves, they silently (and optimistically) hoped he was just going through a “phase.”
“Ah! I am your personal mouse, here to take you wherever you want to go. Of course your name was given to me before you even came here.”
“I was wondering,” Tollie said, “how I landed exactly here, when this was what was in my mind, just before I got here?”
“You will find,” Mr Mouse told him in a gentle, patient manner, “that this is how things work here in the World-Wide Web. You will end up in the middle of many things that you only just thought of, and also many that your natural curiosity will just lead you to. You’ll get used to it.”
Quite a contrast to Tollie’s first impression of the cavorting, singing mouse. “Are you in charge here?” he asked.
Mr Mouse considered this as if the thought of someone being “in charge” of the World-Wide Web had never entered his mind before.
“Noooo… I couldn’t say that… Maybe we will find out together just who is in charge, if anyone is.” He looked genuinely perplexed.
CHAPTER 2
THE IDENTICAL MEN
As if on cue, two roly-poly gentlemen came jaunting over the hill toward them. You could tell they were gentlemen as they wore identical vests and glasses. But Tollie knew for certain that they were not in charge! They were altogether too silly.
And they were identical, both with wide brown eyes, straight black hair that ended in bangs just above their eyes, and smiles that showed their gleaming white teeth to good advantage.
“They’re twins,” Tollie whispered to Mr Mouse.
“NOT!” Mouse whispered right back. “I have encountered them before.”
The first man said in a jolly way, “Hi, I’m Hop Hop,” and, to illustrate, did a little hop on his left foot.
“And I’m Hip Hip,” said the other, performing a couple of little bumps with his right hip to illustrate.
Tollie stifled a laugh. “And I’m Tollie,” he introduced himself, tossing his head back and forth so that he, too, had his own signature gesture.
“Hi, Tollie,” they both answered breezily. “And hello, Mr Mouse, we meet again.”
“Mr Mouse tells me you are not twins.” Tollie could not keep his curiosity in. “But you look so alike! How can that be?”
“Well, we are identical and born of the same woman at the same time of the same day of the same year,” Hop Hop answered.
“And, we are not twins!” Hip Hip chimed in.
They both giggled merrily, seeing the puzzlement in Tollie’s face.
“How can it be?” Tollie wondered out loud.
“Think, Tollie,” Mr Mouse said gently and patiently, as Tollie came to learn was his way. “There is a possible explanation. Think what they could be, if not twins.”
“But they have to be twins!” Tollie protested. “If everything they said is true, about being born the same time, then they must be twins.”
“Tollie,” Mr Mouse went on, “if everything they said is true, then it is also true that they are not twins, as they said.”
Tollie could not argue with this logic and thought and thought, long and hard, and then some, his face scrunched in concentration, as was his way. How can it be? How can it be?
Indeed, how can it be?
After a good amount of thinking, he was ready to give up… but…
Over the hill now came a third roly-poly gentleman, and he, too, was identical to the first two!
He did a little hop and then a little hip bump. �
�Hi, I’m Hip Hop,” he announced. The three of them stood together sharing their mirth at Tollie’s expression.
“Well, of course you are!” Tollie said, laughing with them.
Understanding came visibly to him as it dawned on him what Mr Mouse had hinted at.
“You’re triplets!”
“As you say, so we are,” Hop Hop, Hip Hip and Hip Hop said in unison. They hopped, hipped and hip-hopped away, waving goodbye in unison as they went their merry way.
“The first two men were not twins, but two of triplets,” Mr Mouse summarized, as Tollie would come to learn was also his way. “There is an explanation, as I promised. I will not lead you astray, Tollie. All your challenges will be fair. But you will have to think!”
Tollie shook Mr Mouse’s gray “hand” and nodded, smiling. “Very good, and I’ll agree to that. Where to next?”
“That is up to you, Tollie. I go where your thoughts take us. Just put your hand on my back and we will go!”
Tollie did so.
CHAPTER 3
THE EVIL KING AND THE FAIR MAIDEN
This is how they ended up in the old country, for that was what had entered Tollie’s mind just then.
Here in a beautiful village from the days of yore a sad tale unfolded. There lived a lovely maiden with her parents in a simple but cozy cottage. They were not rich, but had enough, and were happy people in a happy family of three, healthy and hard-working farmers.
All was well had not the king, riding back from the day’s hunt, spied the comely lass. He was smitten by her natural charms and decided then and there that she would become his wife. But the maiden did not return his interest – she did not want to marry the king. It would bring her great riches, but she did not and could not ever love him.
So he decreed it. The king had it announced that she would have a choice. This would make it seem to his subjects that he was actually being fair.
She would be presented with a bag of 100 marbles, 99 of which would be white and one red. Out of this bag, without looking into its contents, the maiden was to select one marble. If she selected the red marble she would not have to marry the king. But if she picked a white marble, she would have to agree to wed him or the king would take the cottage away from her parents, leaving them bereft of a home and the work they did in the fields that sustained them. The maiden was to make her selection from the bag on the morrow.
That night the king consulted the Three Wicked Witches of the Other Direction, his trusted advisors. The horrible hags, jealous anyway of the maiden’s beauty, churned their cauldron through the night, in the darkness of their cave. “Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble,” they chanted, their evil minds working to find a way the king could guarantee that the maiden would not even have her one-in-a-hundred chance to pull out the one red marble.
In the morning, they told the king their plan. He was to put only white marbles in the bag. After all, he was the king. No one would dare check. The maiden could only pull out a white marble.
“How unfair this all is,” Tollie lamented.
“Well,” said Mr Mouse gallantly, “the maiden might find a way. But what could it be? Can you think of a way for her to save herself?”
Tollie scrunched up his face in deep thought as the scene continued to unfold before them. How could the maiden escape the designs of the king and the devious plan devised by the Three Wicked Witches of the Other Direction?
Now they watched as, during the night, the maiden had a dream. It being the World-Wide Web, Tollie and Mr Mouse could see her dream as the maiden slept. She dreamt that her would-be, one day, Prince Charming, whom she had not yet met but whom she recognized at once, visited her and whispered in her ear, telling her of the plan of the Witches and what she was to do the next day to get out of having to marry the king and to save her and her parents’ home. But, though the Web let them see her dreaming, it did not allow them to hear what he whispered, try as they might.
The appointed time came on the morrow and, at noon, the entire village showed up on the white gravel of the central square, to watch the maiden make her choice.
There was much fanfare as the king arrived, then the maiden. A hushed silence fell as the king handed her the bag of marbles, which she took from him calmly enough. Tollie watched, wide-eyed and feeling helpless, wondering what she could do. She did not have a chance!
Or did she? Mr Mouse had said all the challenges would be fair, so it seemed there must be some way she could thwart the king.
Smiling at the king and then at all the villagers, the maiden reached into the bag and pulled out a marble, holding it within her hand so no one could see its color!
Tollie tensed up, but Mr Mouse seemed at ease.
The maiden forthwith dropped the selected marble into her purse, still concealing it so no one, villager or king, could see its color even now. She then emptied the king’s bag of its remaining 99 marbles, spilling them out onto the white gravel of the village square.
All the marbles were clearly white, not a red one in sight.
“I must have picked the red marble,” she announced so all could hear, “for there was no red marble remaining in the bag.” She waved the empty bag to demonstrate.
The king was furious, but there was nothing for him to do without revealing to all that there had never been a red marble in the bag, giving away his devious plot.
The maiden smiled and left with her parents, all quite relieved. And, in time, the maiden and her family moved to a wondrous land far away (where there were no kings), never to worry about the evil king again, and, of course, she met her Prince Charming and they all lived happily ever after.
“Whew!” Tollie let out his breath. “She did figure out a way. Amazing!”
“Either she was clever or her future Prince Charming rescued her by giving her the plan,” said Mr Mouse. “Let us hope the king has learned something today.”
That worthy was stalking away in haste, embarrassed to face the crowd any longer than he had to. But they all knew what had happened. Behind his back they would always celebrate, among themselves only, the failure of his plan to force the maiden into marrying him.
“Good thing,” Tollie said. “They are a nice family. They are nobler than their king has been. I hope they will be happy in their future home and that the king will in time become a more benevolent ruler, unlikely as that might seem.”
Tollie put his hand on Mouse’s back without really thinking about it. (He had taken to thinking of him as “Mouse,” though he wouldn’t dream of saying it out loud.) It seemed natural to him now that Mouse could transport him to whatever time and place his flights of fancy and whim led them. He was thinking how glad he was that, so far, their adventures had not involved too much math. He was a bit intimidated by the subject. Little did he know!
CHAPTER 4
A STERN TEACHER AND HIS BRILLIANT YOUNG PUPIL
He had no sooner thought it than they ended up in a mathematics classroom of centuries ago, facing a stern-looking teacher, a man of evident sour disposition.
Tollie vowed that in future he would try harder to keep his thoughts under control. Mouse was chuckling merrily. “You don’t always end up exactly where you thought you would.”
“Not quite,” Tollie acknowledged, somewhat grumpily. But he had to admit to himself it was not Mouse’s fault. He had been thinking the thoughts that led them here, even though this was not what he had in mind.
“Mr Mouse, can we leave here now? It was a mistake, my thinking of math and math classrooms.”
“Oh, no, Tollie, we have to face our challenges,” Mouse answered cheerily (altogether too cheerily for Tollie’s mood). “Curiosity killed the cat, you know.”
Mouse said this last with what seemed to Tollie to be particular relish. Cats, Tollie reasoned, were doubtless not Mouse’s favorite creatures.
They hovered at the edge of the classroom, not exactly participants, but observers nevertheless. One of the young p
upils, now just a boy, but a boy with a big destiny, was Carl Friedrich Gauss. Tollie had read of him, mentioned along with Archimedes and Sir Isaac Newton as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Tollie was awed by this turn of events, even though he knew he was mostly responsible for it.
“Have you figured out who is in charge of the World-Wide Web, Tollie?” Mouse asked mischievously. It made Tollie think he had an idea about that, but they were distracted by the teacher droning monotonously at the students.
“Now,” the sour teacher said, “you will all add up the numbers going from one to one-hundred, write down the answer on your tablets, and bring them up to me. Just put your answers down on my desk.” Of course, he simply did not feel like teaching that day and this “exercise” was his excuse to sit back and relax while the pupils toiled over the meaningless task he had set.
Boring, Tollie thought and wished he had never thought of mathematics at all. This was going to take forever.
“Not forever,” Mouse said with a smile, seeming to read his mind. “Mathematics can be a lot of fun, if you let it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tollie grumbled.
But then he watched curiously and not without interest as the young Carl Friedrich walked only moments later to the front of the classroom and placed his tablet on the teacher’s desk. It had taken him only seconds. “Tollie,” Mouse whispered, “how do you think he added up all those numbers, from one to one-hundred, so quickly?” Mouse, of course, had no doubt that Carl Friedrich had come up with the right answer, even though it seemed to have come to him miraculously quickly.
It was all giving Tollie a headache. He could not figure it out. Of course, not believing it was possible, he could not find his way to an answer. (There was much he had still to learn from Mouse.)
The teacher frowned at young Gauss, also not believing he had the right answer so quickly. He did not deign to look at the tablet but waited and waited, until all the pupils brought their tablets to his desk in dribs and drabbles, laying them on top of Carl Friedrich Gauss’s tablet, so his was on the bottom, in what seemed to Tollie like an eternity.